Cover Cavalcade

 SEPTEMBER IS FLINTSTONES & JETSONS MONTH!!

This Ray Dirgo cover is from 1972. Pebbles and Bam-Bam are snot-nosed little trouble-makers, aren't they?

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Sam Spade: "The Death Bed Caper" 6/20/48

Before solving the case, Sam takes part in two real death bed statements and one fake death bed statement.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Treachery in Outer Space!

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #170

A crystal discovered on Saturn's moon Titan is stronger than steel and is gradually replacing steel as a main component in construction. That makes it really, really valuable and competition to win the contract for shipping the crystals to Earth is intense.

So the Solar Guard decides to have the various shipping companies have a race. Time trials in the form a trip from Earth to the Moon will narrow the competition down to three companies. Then those three will each race from Earth to Titan. Whomever gets there first wins the shipping contract.

Naturally, one of the companies cheats. In fact, they cheat on the level of sabotage and murder. 

This is the premise of 1955's Treachuer in Outer Space, by Carey Rockwell. It's yet another fun entry in the novels based on the Tom Corbett tv series.

There's actually two story arcs that eventually intertwine. One is the race, with Tom, Astro and Roger each assigned to one of the ships as an observer. The other story arc is on Titan, where Captain Strong is trying to figure out why the force field that protects the colony from Titan's deadly methane atmosphere is failing. The pilot cheating in the race is connected to Titan's problems.

There's a bit of a mystery at the heart of the novel. We know who the bad guys are from the get-go, but we at first have no idea how they cheated on the race. The bad guy bypasses his refueling stop along the way and SHOULD have run out of fuel well before reaching Titan. But he arrives all the same. How he pulled this off makes for a nice plot twist later on.

That bit of cheating does also involve a minor weak point in the story. Roger Manning is the observer on that ship. Whenever any one calls the ship, the pilot says Roger is sleeping and can't talk. Later, Roger has supposedly deserted. That Captain Strong, Tom and the others don't at least suspect that Roger might be in trouble is downright inexcusable.

But that's only one small glitch in an otherwise good story. There's mystery and action. The final chapters have the cadets getting captured and re-captured several times, but also shows that they never stop thinking and planning ways of escaping and foiling the villains. 

Treachery in Outer Space is another entertaining Tom Corbett adventure. 

Taking a Bath used to be Relaxing

 

cover art by Paul Galucy

 A few years ago, we looked at an issue of Master of Kung Fu in which we learned that Shang Chi can't even have a quiet lunch without someone trying to kill him.

In MoKF #55 (August 1977), we learn that poor Shang can't even take a relaxing bath without being stalked by assassins.

He easily takes out the bad guys and finds out they were sent by someone named Han Sung.

For Shang Chi, this is a blast from the past. He knew Han Sung when he was a teenager--still being trained by his father Fu Manchu. He thought of Han as a friend and, in fact, Han trusted him enough to reveal that he (Han Sung) was spying on Fu Manchu to learn about the arch-villain's immortality serum. At some point Han Sung disappeared and Shang always thought he had left voluntarily. 

Shang Chi assumes Han Sung things Shang is still working for his father, so he begins to track him down. This means--of course--that he gets into some more fights along the way.

When he does find Han Sung, he discovers that Han didn't run from Fu Manchu's organization. Instead, he was experimented on by Fu--artificially aged during Fu's experiments to perfect his immortality serum. Now Han has stolen a sample of that serum, intending to drink it as soon as he makes sure he's not going to be assassinated soon afterwards. That's why he's tying up perceived loose ends like Shang Chi.

Shang, though, knows that Fu Manchu has conditioned himself to use the serum. Anyone else using it will be killed. He tries to convince Han Sung of this. Predictably, Han refuses to accept this, drinks the serum and... well, it turns out he did not choose wisely.

The story was co-plotted by Doug Moench and Archie Goodwin, with Moench writing the script. The art is by Mike Zeck. It's a filler issue in the midst of the excellent multi-part spy/martial arts stories we usually found in the series. But it's a good, solid filler issue. Yes, Han Sung's fate is predictable, but the story flows along logically and the fight scenes are pretty cool. 

Next week, Bugs Bunny finds a genie, which leads to nothing but trouble. 

Cover Cavalcade

 SEPTEMBER IS FLINTSTONES & JETSONS MONTH!!

A 1971 cover by Ray Dirgo.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Murder by Experts: "Dig Your Own Grave" 8/15/49

A woman unwittingly plots her own murder---twice!

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Captain Scarface

 

Barton MacLane was a great character actor who probably played bad guys more often than good guys. He also probably holds the record for the person most often shot or beaten up by Humphrey Bogart.

In the 1953 film Captain Scarface, he plays the title character and he's definitely the bad guy. A tramp steamer named the S.S. Banos is torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet sub, with survivors machine gunned in the water to keep this act of destruction a secret. Well, everyone but the radioman Clegg (Paul Brinegar), who was paid off to make sure no SOS was sent. 

Captain Tredor (also known as Scarface) then brings a nearly exact duplicate into a South American port, with plans to continue on to the Panama Canal. There, an atomic bomb hidden on the ship will be detonated. It's a suicide mission, but Scarface and his crew are fanatics--willing to die to accomplish their mission.

In port, Scarface takes aboard a  Soviet scientist and his daughter, who think they are being helped to defect. Instead, Scarface is soon forcing the scientist to make sure the bomb will work. 

But there's a fly in Scarfaces's ointment. Sam Wilton (Leif Erickson) is an American who has gotten in trouble and needs to leave South America as quickly as possible. Circumstances land him on the ship, using the identity of another Soviet agent without at first realizing that's who he's impersonating. Fortunately, Scarface is expecting the agent, but has never met him.

Wilton doesn't know what's going on, but (despite his own shady past) soon realizes he'll have to do something to save innocent lives. Outsmarting Scarface won't be easy, though. The ship captain might be a fanatic, but he's smart as a whip.

It's a fun movie, generating suspense as it moves the story along briskly. A sort-of side plot involving two innocent middle-aged passengers plays out in a way that ends up intertwining with the main plot and adding a several moments of sincere heartbreak. 

The ending is a little anti-climactic, but overall this is a movie worth watching.

Run, Gingerbread Man, Run!

 

cover art tentatively credited to Walt Kelly

Fairy Tale Parade #6 (May-July 1943) includes a charming 6-page story drawn and probably written by Walt Kelly. It's a simple, straightforward tale, given life by Kelly's energetic and delightful art.

The premise is simple. An old man, old woman and young boy live in a house, where the woman is cooking a gingerbread man. But the gingerbread man is (understandably) unwilling to just sit back and be eaten. He makes a break for it.

He outruns the man, woman and boy, bragging about how fast and agile a runner he is the whole time. He passes a couple of ditch diggers and taunts them into chasing him, then outruns them as well. 

He does the same with a bear and a wolf. Can no one catch this arrogant braggard of a cookie?

Well, someone can. When the gingerbread man brags to a fox, the fox feigns that he's hard of hearing. The gingerbread man comes closer and closer, annoyed as he repeatedly yells "I can outrun you, too!!!"

Before he knows it, he's close enough for the fox to simply grab and then quickly eat.

Like most fairy tales and fables, it has a simple moral--in this case: don't be overconfident or arrogant. And that's fine. Simple morals are an appropriate part of fairy tales and this one is a good lesson. But, as I mentioned above, what really gives this tale life is Kelly's art. The action is kinetic and fun--the characters are all endowed with personality. It's a fairy tale world all of us enjoy visiting. Well, as long as we don't get too close to the fox.

You can read this one online HERE. 

Next week... well, a jump from fairy tales to knife-wielding assassins seems logical enough to me. We'll be visiting with Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. 

Cover Cavalcade

 SEPTEMBER IS FLINSTONES & JETSONS MONTH!!

A Harvey Eisenberg cover from 1964.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Suspense: "Dateline: Lisbon" 10/5/44

A photograph that accidentally captures the image of a Nazi war criminal might be enough to get two people killed.

Click HERE to listen or download.