Cover Cavalcade

THIS is why I don't own a cat!!! Nothin' but trouble, the lot of them.

Friday's Favorite OTR

The Lone Ranger: “Raising the Siege” 4/24/42

The leading citizen in a remote town is disdainful of that new-fangled telegraph system. But when the town is besieged by outlaws after a gold dust shipment, a desperate plan to get a message for help out to an army fort might just change his mind.

It’s the Lone Ranger, of course, who makes the dangerous attempt to reach the telegraph line and splice into it. In fact, the Ranger has a pretty busy episode: he outruns a posse that mistakes him for an outlaw; warns the town; and organizes a defense before he even gets around to riding for help.

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Doing more harm than good

Dick Powell started his Hollywood career as a singer/dancer in light-weight musical comedies. So it was something of a shock in 1944 when he played hard-boiled private eye Phillip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet and did it extremely well.


Powell played off his newly-won hard-boiled cred for the rest of his career, both in film and on radio. In fact, a year after Murder, My Sweet, he re-joined director Edward Dymtryk to star in a superb film noir titled Cornered.

Powell is a Canadian named Laurence Gerard just released from a POW camp as the war ends, collecting a small fortune in back pay. But instead of heading home, he returns to France. His French wife had been executed at the order of a Vichy French official. And when Powell finds that official, he's going to have his revenge.

The official--named Jarnoc--is supposedly dead. To make things even harder, there's no picture or description of him. But Gerard manages to dig up a clue that takes him from France to Argentina, where he's soon hip-deep in a subculture of fascists and collaborators. But not all the villains he meets are necessarily villains and he may end up undercutting attempts to break up the local fascist organization.

Cornered has a exceptionally well-constructed plot--everything that happens follows a perfectly logical pattern. And, like all good film noir, it's full of interesting supporting characters. Most notable is a "professional guide" played by Walter Slezak, who may be working for the fascists or working for himself, depending on what day of the week it is.

Slezak specialized in playing sleazy villains and giving them believable personalities. He does his typical great job with this role.

Powell is right on target as Gerard, playing the role with barely contained anger seething just below the surface.Also, Gerard is suffering from what today we would call Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome and given to brief but intense panic attacks.

What makes the film particularly interesting is that Powell, though the protagonist, isn't presented as automatically in the right. His desire for revenge rather than justice and his heavy-handed investigative technique (he's not, after all, a professional P.I. this time around) soon start to interfere with another set of good guys who are also trying to smoke out the collaborators.

It all leads up to a climax in a deserted waterfront bar, where Gerard seems to be hopelessly trapped unless the fact that the bad guys no longer completely trust each other changes the situation drastically.



Cornered is a textbook example of the strengths of of film noir: black-and-white photography that makes great use of light and shadow; interesting supporting characters; strong and logical story line and a flawed but sympathetic protagonist.

History of the Marvel Universe: July 1969

FANTASTIC FOUR #88

Smartest guy in the universe, my Aunt Fanny!!!

Okay, Reed, your wife says she’s found a nice house in the country. Of course, it’s of an odd design that includes being mostly underground, no one knows who built it and at one point you stumble across a booby trap and nearly get zapped.

Question: Should you buy this place and move in with your wife and infant son?

Reed’s answer: Sure, why not?

In many ways, this issue and the next make up for a strong story with a lot of great action, but I simply can’t not let the weak set-up go by without mocking it. It’s an underground house built mostly underground that contains hidden high-tech booby traps and is of unknown origin. REED, YOU’RE AN IDIOT. DON’T BUY IT, MAN! IT’S A BAD IDEA!

Oh, well, at least it ends with a great cliffhanger. The place has been built by the Mole Man, who is using it to broadcast a ray that will eventually make everyone on the surface world blind.

That’s a creepy plan by itself. But when Reed and Sue move in, then have Crystal and Johnny over for dinner, he turns the ray up to eleven and turns them instantly blind, then confronts them in an appropriately gloating fashion.

And that really is a great cliffhanger. It’s too bad it’s marred by giving pretty much all the good guys a collective Idiot Ball in order to get to that part. Both Stan and Jack were better than this, by golly.

SPIDER MAN #74

We finally find out what the deal is with that darned ancient tablet. The hieroglyphics on it were never translated because they were not words, but biochemical symbols that gave directions on making a youth serum.

Doc Connors, forced to work for the elderly Maggia chief Silverman because his wife and son are being held hostage, figures this out and whips up the potion. He wants to test it, but the anxious Silverman snatches it up and chugs it down. And it works—he’s almost instantly a young man again.

While all this is going on, the story is effectively padded out by Spider Man’s desperate search for the Connors’; tension between Silverman and his presumed successor (a diminutive lawyer known as Big Caesar); and a typically well-choreographed fight between Spidey and some mob thugs. I have to nit-pick on one item: Spidey finds out Mrs. Connors and her son are hostages because one of the thugs simply shouts out this information for no real reason. But that’s a minor quibble with an otherwise strong issue that will soon lead into one of the best Lizard stories of the Stan Lee-era.

 THOR #166

With Sif captured by Him (though Him is acting with childish innocence and means no harm), Thor goes into a berserker rage. When he tracks down Him on a desolate planet, he fights with savagery and no thought of giving quarter or offering mercy to a defeated foe.

This, it turns out, is a no-no as far as Asgardians are concerned. When Him begins to lose the fight and wraps himself back up in a cocoon, Odin zaps him away into deep space to save him from the Thunder God. He’ll eventually be found by the High Evolutionary in Marvel Premiere #1 (1972), where he’ll get the name Adam Warlock and slowly get the hang of being a good guy.

Thor comes out of his rage and realizes he’s been naughty. And Odin already has a penance planned out for his son. He’s decided that someone has to go into deep space to search for Galactus. That’s now a job for Thor.

Once again, the story allows Jack Kirby to go to town with cosmic-level imagery.  At this point, even discounting the poor plotting in this month’s FF, I’m leaning slightly towards Thor being the best showcase for Kirby’s work in 1969. It’s a close call, because the Fantastic Four also looks, well, fantastic. But there you have it.

That’s it for June. Next week, we’ll begin our look at the Weisinger Superman era with a look at the introduction of Supergirl.

In two week, we’ll return to the Marvel Universe as we enter August 1969, in which Tom Seaver comes within two outs of pitching a perfect game for the Mets; The Fantastic Four quite literally get blindsided by the Mole Man; Silvermane discovers he may soon have to enroll in a diaper-cleaning service; and Thor gets ready to begin his search for Galactus.

Cover Cavalcade

This Russ Heath cover really uses light and shadows effectively.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Suspense: “Too Little to Live On.” 12/26/47

This is yet another example of Suspense giving a comedian a serious role. In this case, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson play a dirt-poor couple forced to care for a invalid but rich relative. This guy makes their lives miserable, driving the couple to think about murder.

Ozzie and Harriet do a great job in their roles, the script is solid and generates a lot of honest emotion, and the ending is absolutely brutal.

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The Very Definition of Epic

It’s the early 17^th Century. The Turks are certain to march north into Russia when the weather allows it. Guarding the border along the Dnieper River are the Cossacks. But they lack arms and supplies and their leader—Rurik—is a prisoner of the Turks.

So the young chief Demid and his big partner Ayub plan to raid down into Ottoman territory, stealing enough gold to pay Rurik’s ransom.

Well, there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers serving under the Ottoman flag, all of whom would gladly cut the throat of any Cossack they catch. How many men will Demid need to carry out a successful raid that will take him deep into the heart of enemy territory?

Demid figures thirty men will be enough.

This is the premise of Harold Lamb’s novella “The Witch of Aleppo,” published in the January 30, 1924 issue of Adventure magazine. I’ve written about Lamb’s superb Cossack stories before. They are true edge-of-your-seat adventures, written with a real sense of time and place, filled with great characters and plots with many twists and turns as well as exciting action.

This is the October issue of Adventure. I was unable to locate an image of the January issue

.

Though “Witch” does not star Khlit, the aged Cossack who is my favorite Lamb character, it’s perhaps my favorite of his stories. It has a truly epic feel to it—the small band of Cossacks must ride huge distances, capture a galley and row across a hostile sea, then ride again for many more leagues before they reach the city of Aleppo (located in what would today be Syria), in which--rumor has it--a great treasure is stored.

Then there’s just the small matter of getting into the walled and heavily guarded city, then getting out again with the treasure.

Demid and Ayub—a true odd couple to start with—are wonderful characters in of themselves. Demid is a young and quick-thinking warrior who has already earned an authority over others despite his youth. Ayub is a big veteran who is deadly in a fight, wielding a huge broadsword, but is also superstitious and sometimes prone to act without thinking.

They had already appeared in several earlier stories. This time around, they are joined by Michael—an itinerant Irish swordsman isn’t as foppish as he first seems—and Lila, an Armenian woman rescued from the Muslims who may or may not be trusted to help. Lila is the title character, a beautiful young lady who Ayub soon decides is a witch who has cast a spell on Demid—since why else would he insist on bringing a woman along? But Demid has a plan for getting into Aleppo and he needs the girl to carry it out.

There are a number of great action set-pieces here, most notably a fight to capture a galley; a frantic escape from the beached galley sometime later; and a desperate battle in a secret treasure room at Aleppo. Demid thinks and plans his way out of seemingly hopeless situations on several occasions. Stuff happens that makes you think Lila can be trusted. Then stuff happens that changes your mind. Then even more stuff happens that might possibly change your mind again.

I don’t want summarize too much of the story, because I don’t want to spoil any of the great plot twists that keep coming up. Suffice to say that Demid’s raid into Aleppo lasts about seven months, with he and his men in constant danger pretty much all the time.  Despite the relative short length of the tale, Lamb is able to give a real sense of distances to be crossed and dangers to be confronted—creating an adventure that the Cossacks will be telling each other about over their campfires for years to come. 

History of the Marvel Universe: June 1969

FANTASTIC FOUR #87

Free from the village and joined by Sue, the FF storm Doom’s castle. Doom, though, is setting up a trap for them once they get inside.

This all sets up a pretty nifty conclusion, which surprisingly involves one of Doom’s henchman—the ex-Nazi guy whose been sniveling around at Doom’s heels for the last few issues. Basically, the guy is so obsessed with making himself look good in his boss’s eyes that he screws everything up. Doom has to kill him instead of his arch-enemies.

In what is a bit of a deus ex machina, when his booby-trap goes awry, Doom just grumpily calls off the fight and tells the FF to leave his country. I’m not sure if I completely buy that—it’s not as if Doom didn’t have a castle full of advanced weaponry, trained soldiers and killer robots still at his command.

But I don’t really feel the urge to complain. Though not as epic as the previous Doom story arc (where he stole the Silver Surfer’s powers), this was still a good, solid story. I especially like how the action logically shifted from a desperate last stand in the previous issue to an assault on a castle in this issue. Also, props to Stan and Jack for giving both Sue and Crystal some cool action stuff to do during the fighting. It’s a long way since the Sue of the first year of the comic, where the most she ever seemed to get to do was surreptitiously trip an occasional fleeing Skrull.

Also, there’s a little bit more foreshadowing about the underground house that Sue was considering buying a few issues back. That poor real estate decision will be driving the plot for the next few issues.

SPIDER MAN #73

First, Kingpin wanted that darned ancient tablet. Then Shocker stole it. Now the Maggia (the Marvel Universe version of the Mafia) is after it.

Spider Man tracks the tablet to an old girl friend of Shocker, but the Maggia leg-breaker Man Mountain Marko is there as well. Marko doesn’t have any powers, but (like Ox of the Enforcers) he’s so big and strong that he can stand toe-to-toe with a superhero.

Marko uses the rather ruthless tactic of tossing a girl out a window to distract Spidey while he gets away with the tablet.

The action scenes are typically cool, but it’s the character moments that really shine in this issue. I love a bit early on where Spider Man enters the Stacy house through Captain Stacy’s bedroom window, in order to compare notes with the policeman and get a lead on the tablet. Stacy helps him, but only after sternly telling the webslinger “Just because I don’t thing you’re as bad as you’re painted, doesn’t mean I like having my house broken into!”

But the best scene involves Robbie and his son Randy at the Daily Bugle. It is, in fact, Robbie’s Crowning Moment of Awesome and cements his well-deserved reputation as one of the most thoughtful and decent characters to populate the Marvel Universe.

Randy is thinking of quitting college. Robbie isn’t objecting to his son’s militant politics (“maybe we need more of that stripe”), but he still gives a corny but all-the-same heartfelt speech about the importance of an education to combat bigotry.

He then stands up to Jamison, who is throwing a fit for reporting a story that made Spider Man look heroic. Jamison backs down when Robbie refuses to distort straight news stories.

Randy is impressed that his dad was willing to put his job on the line to do the right thing, but still wonders like he has to “take all that bull from a racist like him?” Robbie’s answer is the best part of that scene, accurately defining his character and giving us an insight into Jamison:

This was, in fact, an important moment in Jamison’s continuing characterization. Since he’s supposed to be a blowhard and a bit of a jerk, a lazy writer might have made him a bigot to highlight his faults. But Stan Lee didn’t go that route. Instead, he made sure we knew that J.J.J. is an equal opportunity blowhard and jerk. He does have his good points, even if those points are often hard to find.

Anyway, while all this is going on, Marko takes the tablet to the elderly Silvermane—the head of the Maggia. Silverman, who apparently knows the secret the tablet holds, kidnaps a scientist to help decipher the tablet.

That the scientist is a one-armed man named Curt Connors couldn’t possibly lead to any trouble, could it?

THOR #165

Pluto and his futuristic mutants have been defeated, but there is still something powerful wandering around the halls of the Atomic Research Center.  Thor, Sif and Balder investigate and soon encounter “Him.”

This guy, if you remember, is the genetically engineered super being made by a cabal of scientists back in Fantastic Four #66. He had destroyed his creators and fled into space, but a chain of unusual circumstances (well not so unusual in a comic book universe) soon had him back on Earth and wrapped in a cocoon. Now he’s on the loose again.

He’s decided that he’s lonely and that Sif would be a good mate, so he snatches her up and zaps himself to another dimension. Thor uses his hammer to whip up his own dimensional vortex, allowing he and Balder to follow.

But, just as Thor and Him confront one another on a desolate planetscape, an old hag of a witch (conveniently named Haag) reaches through a dimensional hole to kidnap Balder, intending to bring him to Karnilla. While Thor is saving Balder, Him and Sif disappear again.

Once again, we have a strong story that is also designed to highlight Jack Kirby’s awesomeness at drawing alien landscapes, bizarre creatures and cosmically powered beings.

That’s it for June. In July, the Fantastic Four unwisely follow up on Sue’s poor real estate decision; Spider Man hunts for a missing friend; and Thor goes into a Berserker Rage.

Cover Cavalcade

This guy isn't wearing a badge, so I assume he's the sheriff killer and not a sheriff. Looks mean enough for the part, anyways.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Suspense: “Murder in G Flat” 4/5/51

Suspense was, of course, well-known for using a different movie star in nearly every episode—often casting them in parts against type. Perhaps the niftiest variation of this was casting a well-known comedian in a serious role.

“Murder in G-Flat” gives us Jack Benny, doing an excellent job of playing Hercules Remington, a piano tuner who finds himself involved in an adventure involving a cache of stolen money and, eventually, a murder.

Benny plays the role completely straight and he has a strong story to back up his performance. The tale has several great twists coming one on top of another, with a tense climax atop a Coney Island funhouse—where Hercules Remington’s habit of mentally translating all sounds into their musical equivalent just might help save his life.

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