Cover Cavalcade

SEPTEMBER IS YOUNG LEX LUTHOR MONTH!!!

A Curt Swan cover from 1960.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Phil Harris & Alice Faye: "An Elephant for Mr. Scott" 12/14/52

Phil is led to believe that his show's sponsor wants an elephant for Christmas. So Phil sets out to get him an elephant for Christmas. What could possibly go wrong?

Click HERE to listen or download. 

With this blog closing down soon, I'm afraid this is the last Friday's Favorite OTR post.

The End of an Era

 

Gee whiz, I've been doing this blog since 2007.

Over the last year, though, I've started a Substack blog on which I review every book I read and I've started a BookTube channel on YouTube. Both get a relatively low number of hits, but I'm enjoying doing this and my few YouTube viewers are kind enough to give me a bunch of likes for each video, letting me know that there's at least a few people enjoying them.

So, to make time for those ventures, I'm afraid I'm going to bring this blog to a close. There's one more Friday's Favorite OTR scheduled for Friday and I have Monday Cover Cavalcade posts ready for September ("Lex Luthor Month") and October ("Marvel Classic Comics Month"). But after that'll be all.

I am going to start including reviews of old and often obscure comic books on my Substack, so that will continue. It will just be a little less frequent. 

Anyway, I've never been sure how many readers I have here. There's 130 listed as Followers. Individual posts show anywhere from 50 to 100 views per post, but my daily stats often show thousands of hits per day. I'm pretty sure the daily stats include some sort of bot activity. It's nice to think that thousands flock to my blog each day, but that seems unlikely. 

For those of you who have been following this blog--thank you for doing so and I hope you've enjoyed what you've read. As I said, I'll at least occasionally including comic book reviews on my Books Worth Reading substack, so keep an eye out for that. 

I do hope many of you will follow along with my Books Worth Reading ventures, but whether you do or not, I'm sincerely grateful for the time you've spent reading this blog.

Books Worth Reading Links:

BookTube Channel

Substack 

Cover Cavalcade

  AUGUST IS "THE HEROES OF STREET AND SMITH" MONTH!!!

The Skipper, from 1937. Cover art by Laurence Donovan.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: "Murder Merry-Go-Round" 3/11/49

Someone is sabotaging a small travelling circus. Johnny has to find out both why and who.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Childhood Impressions Revisited: The First Time I Read Where Eagles Dare

 

I first read the book Where Eagles Dare, by Alistair MacLean, when I was maybe 13 years old. I’d seen the movie on TV not long before and loved it. I did get a little lost in the wicked plot twists within the movie--I think both book and movie actually explain the plot twists well when they happen, but as a 13-year-old, I was mostly engrossed by the machine gun fire and explosions.

So when I saw the book on the paperback rack at an Eckerds Drug Store, I pulled out some paper route money and bought it. (As a side note: Remember when mass market paperbacks were cheap enough to be impulse buys? Ah, the good ol’ days!)

Anyway, in the book, there’s a point where the Allied commando team has to stash their equipment before mingling in town disguised as German soldiers. They break into the railway station and someone comes up with the idea of hiding their stuff in the Left Baggage Room. As a 13-year-old, I completely misinterpreted the term. What made the “Left” Baggage Room special as compared to the “Right” Baggage Room? It was a conundrum and there was no internet in those ancient days to look it up.

Over the years, I re-read the book frequently--it remains a favorite of mine. Everytime I got to that passage, I wondered anew about the “Left Baggage Room.” Even when I was more than old enough to figure out the context, I was apparently locked into my 13-year-old interpretation.

When the internet became a thing, I could have easily looked it up, but perhaps I enjoyed my minor bafflement. It had become a nostalgic part of re-reading a favorite novel.

Then, about 15 years ago, I was travelling to South Sudan and had an all-day layover at Heathrow Airport. I decided to visit the National Museum (my favorite place in London), but needed to store my backpack somewhere. That’s no problem, I was told. Leave it in the “Left Baggage Room.” You know, the place where you leave your bags until you need them again.

I was stunned for a moment. It was an epiphany, with my mind instantly shifting to Where Eagles Dare. IT ALL MADE SENSE AT LAST. No wonder it was the perfect place for the commandoes to store their equipment. At last, the mystery was solved.

Of course, the next time I read the book, I was a little disappointed not to suffer the usual bout of minor bafflement when Major Smith suggests hiding their stuff in the Left Baggage Room.

Oh, well. Some of us are impossible to please, I suppose.

Sappy the Sportsman

 

cover art by John Walworth

As far as I can determine, the only appearance of Sappy the Sportsman is in Barnyard Comics #1 (June 1944). And perhaps that's all he should have. In that one story, Al Pross' lively art and the unknown writer's decision to give Sappy and his manager Pug Brooklyn accents lend the story charm and humor. But Sappy is pretty much a one-joke character.

He's a skinny, clumsy dog who craves being a successful athlete. His overly optimistic manager Pug keeps getting him try-outs, but Sappy isn't any good at anything. In baseball, he throws a wild pitch so softly, the catcher doesn't know he's thrown it. Then he gets beaned when the ball is thrown back to him.

He knocks himself out when he tries boxing. 

He gets tangled in the net when playing tennis.

And he gets tangled with the TABLE when trying ping pong.

Well, that's enough for Sappy. He finds one thing he's good at, which is knitting. It's safe. Or at least it should be--in the last panel of the story, he pokes himself in the finger with a needle.

It's a story that brings you a smile, but doesn't necessarily have you laughing out loud. As I said before, it's Pross' art that makes it work. And the decision to have Sappy and Pug speak Brooklynese just seems... right. It gives the story a Damon Runyon-meets-Tex Avery vibe that the art alone couldn't carry. 

And even if the story isn't a classic by any definition, characters like Sappy are a part of comic book heritage and should be remembered.

You can see if it brings you a smile by reading it HERE.

Next week... well, next week will be an important announcement about the fate of this blog that will shake the very foundations of Western Civilization. 

Cover Cavalcade

  AUGUST IS "THE HEROES OF STREET AND SMITH" MONTH!!!

From 1936: The Whisperer as portrayed by John Howitt.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Box 13: "Archimedes and the Romans" 7/31/49

A young boy writes Box 13 about a mysterious happening. Dan decides to check it out, though it's just a letter from a kid. Nothing will come of it.  Right?

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Bombs over Burma

 

Anna May Wong is a great actress and it's too bad that the racism of the day usually prevented her from getting more than supporting roles in A-movies (there are a few exceptions), she did get the lead role in occasional B-movies. PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation), one of the Poverty Row studios, put her at the head of the cast of a 1942 war movie titled Bombs Over Burma. The rationale at PRC might have been purely business oriented--she was a name that would help sell the film on the Chinese market. That is speculation rather than objective fact, but in any case, a starring role is nonetheless a starring role.

She plays a Chinese school teacher named Lin Ying who also works as an espionage agent, helping in her own way to fight against the invading Japanese. Her mission in this film--find out what enemy agent is feeding the Japanese information about important supply convoys travelling along the Burma Road.

This mission put her on a bus driven by an American expatriate named Slim. Her fellow passengers are an eclectic group of Americans and Europeans. When a damaged bridge forces them to stop for the night at a Buddhist monastery, the situation grows dangerous.

Lin Ying discovers the monk who runs the monastery has a secret room with a short-wave radio, but there is an initial uncertainty about whose side he's on. Then there's a murder. False accusations abound and it looks like Lin Ying might get framed for being the enemy agent.

It turns out she's one step ahead of the bad guy the whole time, running a con on him to force him to give himself away and leading to his rather brutal demise.

Like all wartime films dealing with the war, it is propaganda. But that's not a bad thing. When Slim admits he stays in China because he was bullied growing up and now hates seeing China bullied--he calls the coolies working through the night to repair the bridge his blood brothers--it generates more honest emotion than we usually see in Poverty Row films. (For a modern viewer who knows that post-war China would be ruled by one of history's greatest mass murderers, there's unintended poignancy that the filmmakers could not have planned for in 1942.)

It's not a perfect film--even with a short 65-minute run time, there are a few times when scenes are dragged out too long. But the mystery behind the identity of the enemy agent is a reasonably good one and Anna May Wong gives an excellent and grounded performance. She was an actress who always deserved a chance to shine.

Here's the move on YouTube:

A Shavetail Lieutenant

 

cover art by Joe Kubert

Don't ever try to figure out how Easy Company is organized. It can't be done. It was never meant to be a realistic portrayal of a real-life unit and the structure can vary from issue to issue. Where real-life companies were commanded by Captains and platoons that make up the company commanded by lieutenants, we usually see Sgt. Rock running the company with nary an officer in sight.

In Our Army At War #250 (October 1972), though, a brand-new inexperienced lieutenant shows up and is said to be the "new platoon leader." His rank makes sense for this role, but does that mean Sgt Rock was usually commanding just one platoon in Easy Company? Once again, don't think about it too hard. It sincerely doesn't affect the quality of the stories. Just as the DC war stories bounced back and forth through the historical timeline, the way Easy Company's structure changes from story to story is meant to suit the needs of each individual tale. It works. 

Anyway, Easy Company (or a platoon from Easy?) is going to be taken by glider to a location where some paratroopers are pinned down by the Germans. Most of Easy is concerned with the lieutenant's inexperience and his initial dismissal of Rock's advice. But Rock consistently insists throughout the story that the lieutenant is indeed in charge. He respects the chain of command.

The plane towing the glider is shot down and the glider crashes, killing a few of the soldiers. The lieutenant insists they move out wading through a canal, which takes them into a booby trap. Does this guy know what he's doing?

Rock says he does--that they might have run into trouble crossing open fields and it was the officer's responsibility to pick a route. This is one of the strengths of the story. The lieutenant makes a decision that is apparently wrong, but Rock points out it might have been the best decision with what they knew at that moment. 

There's another strong moment when Rock shows the officer the dog tags of the men lost so far and the young lieutenant says "So... many?" It helps humanize him.

Easy Company has several more dangerous situations before getting pinned down. At this point, the lieutenant gives his life to save Easy and allow them to rescue the paratroopers.

The story is a stereotypical one--the young shavetail who needs to listen to the experienced, grizzled sergeant. It's been done many times before. But Russ Heath's art brings it all to life and Bob Kanigher's script does include those humanizing moments. Besides, there have been many, many new officers in real life who had to learn from their sergeants on their way to becoming good commanders. The story deals in a stereotype, but it's a stereotype drawn from real life. 

Next week, let's go in a completely different direction and visit with... who the heck is Sappy the Sportman?

Cover Cavalcade

  AUGUST IS "THE HEROES OF STREET AND SMITH" MONTH!!!

This atmospheric Avenger cover by H.W. Scott is from 1939.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Escape: "Train from Oebisfelde" 9/6/53

An American agent escorting a defecting scientist learns there's a bomb on the train and a very short time to find and disarm it.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Death VERSUS a Salesman

 

"One for the Angels" (October 9, 1959) is the second episode of The Twilight Zone's first season and it's one of my favorites. And one reason I like it is that it's possible to interpret it in two different, equally valid ways.

Ed Wynn is a salesman named Lou Bookman who talks Death into letting him live until he makes the best sales pitch anyone has ever made, then retires so that he'll never make the pitch and thus never die. He effectively runs a con on Death (superbly played by Murray Hamilton).

 

But Death has a quota to meet and life for Bookman means an 8-year-old girl will die in his place. When Bookman learns about this, he delays Death past the girl's appointed time to die by making the best sales pitch ever, so that Death keeps buying things from him and loses track of time. This mean Bookman now has to die--he has deliberately sacrificed himself to save the girl.

That by itself would have made it a classic episode. It's a story of loving self-sacrifice, brought to life by two actors giving great performances and Serling's strong script.

But I think there's a deeper interpretation of this episode. Death knew that Bookman was a Friend to All Children. We've already seen that he can teleport wherever he needs to be, so had no need to walk by Bookman to get to the girl's apartment. 

It is possible that Death ran a reverse con on Bookman, deliberately setting up a situation where he could take Bookman and let the girl live? This doesn't change the fact that Bookman gave his life to save a child, but adds a deeper dimension to the character of Death.

It makes Death a nice guy, as he is in the later episode "Nothing in the Dark." (written by George Clayton Johnson.) Death will do his job, but if he has a chance to help save a little girl who doesn't HAVE to die at this time, then he'll do so. 

On the other hand, if Bookman doesn't legitimately outsmart Death, then does this defang the original con-artist dynamic because Bookman's actions do not cost Death anything? One can argue that I'm trading story friction for emotional warmth and--well, whether that's a fair trade is debatable. 

I full realize that my view of the episode is my own self-insert into the story. In either case, I like it and I'm going for it. It's not a hidden canon fact, but I think its a valid interpretation.

Is He a Good Guy or a Bad Guy?

 

cover art by Bob Budiansky

Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #2 (1980) is hardly a perfect comic book. There are pacing issues; a page panel during a fight scene that is ridiculously dialogue-heavy; and the new character introduced in the issue fails to make any sort of significant splash in the Marvel universe.

But, heck, it's still fun to read.  So I'll forgive its weaknesses. Writer Ralph Macchio and artist Jim Mooney rack up more positives than negatives before the story comes to an end.

It starts with Spidey and a new vigilante called the Rapier stopping a heist at the docks. The Rapier thanks Spidey for the help, then walks away into the night without giving any information about himself. That's fair enough--Rapier himself points out that Spider-Man doesn't give out personal information either. 

Well, there's more going on at the docks than one botched robbery. There's a crime wave going on and, the next day, Peter and Ned Leeds are threatened by thugs when they try to investigate. When Peter returns to the Daily Bugle, he finds yet more thugs. The mob boss Silvermane is there as well, threatening J. Jonah Jameson over crime exposé articles that the Bugle is running. 

One of the strong points of the story is that Macchio remembers an important aspect of J.J.J.'s character. He might be a greedy jerk much of the time and he might have a hang-up about Spider-Man, but he is a determined journalist who doesn't back down from threats. He WILL print the truth. Later, Jonah is obviously affected when Robbie Robertson--perhaps his only real friend--is roughed up. But he still goes ahead with the exposés.

Spider-Man visits Silvermane and, after a nifty fight against the mob boss's goons, threatens Silvermane and tells him to lay off the Bugle. In the meantime, we learn more about the Rapier. He's not a crimefighter looking to help the innocent. Rather, he's a former partner of Silvermane who was double-crossed and left for dead. His goal is to kill his former partner.

Rapier arranges to meet Silvermane at the Met Cloisters--a monastery-turned-museum that is indeed a visually cool place to have a superhero fight. 

Silvermane, of course, tries to cheat by bringing some henchmen along.  Rapier takes them out, reveals his identity to Silvermane and zaps him with an electrified sword. He's about to finish off the mobster when Spider-Man (who had earlier planted a Spidey Tracer on one of Silvermane's men) shows up.

Rapier slashes off Spidey's webshooters and tosses him a sword. What follows is yet another nifty fight, though this is were the dialogue-heavy panel comes in. Even taking into account that Marvel Comics has always cheated a little in how many quips it's possible to make during a fight scene, Spidey delivers an absurdly-long philosophical treatise about the differences between himself and Rapier.

Rapier's girlfriend has arrived and, worried about the man she loves, bashes Spidey over the head. But this just annoys Rapier. Everything has to happen on his terms and Clarissa has spoiled it all. Now he has to start over. He can't finish off Spider-Man. He can't finish off Silvermane. It's all been spoiled.

It's spoiled even more when Silvermane shoots him in the back while he's leaving. Though badly wounded, he does still manage to get away.

That's pretty much it. Introducing Rapier in an annual might indicate that there were hopes the character could make more of a splash, but he pretty much disappears from continuity until he's unceremonously killed off a few years later.  

There is too much dialogue overall and the pacing is therefore too slow in places. But Jim Mooney's fight scenes are all fun and the issue does tell a well-constructed story within the parameters of Aristotelian storytelling conventions. It's an advantage that comic books have over many other storytelling mediums: though great artwork might make us pause to dwell on a particular page or panel, comic books are overall a quick read. As long as there is something good, this allows us to overlook faults. 

Next week, we'll visit with Sgt. Rock. 

Cover Cavalcade

  AUGUST IS "THE HEROES OF STREET AND SMITH" MONTH!!!

Here's a 1936 Doc Savage cover by Walter Baumhofer.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Great Gildersleeve: "Gildy Repairs His Car" 4/4/43

Gildersleeve's car isn't running. Since the local mechanic has been drafted, Gildy decides to repair it himself. What could possibly go wrong?

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Shout-Out to my Awesome Wife

 I maintain this blog, my book-review blog and my BookTube channel because I enjoy geeking out about stuff. I don't make any money off them--my numbers aren't high enough to make doing so possible. I do have a "leave a tip" button on this blog, but I don't really expect anyone to give anything.

I am able to do this and do other geeky things (host occasional game nights, give talks at the public library and for civic organizations) primarily because my wife Angela not only tolerates my geekiness, but supports it. Heck, she let me put a velociraptor in our wedding photo:

She used her extraordinary cross-stitch skills to create this, which is now hanging near our front door:

Heck, she once beat me in an argument about the nature of Color Kid's powers:

She knows me well enough to get me to agree to a Book Challenge detailed in this video:

s 

When I got married, I knew my life would change and some of the stuff I did as a bachelor would get left behind. I was happy to do this, because Angela is smart and wonderful and far too good for me and I love her. But it turns out there's some stuff I didn't have to give up. She actually loves me for who I am and lets me be geeky when I want to be. This blog still exists because my wife is awesome, so a shout-out to her on this blog is appropriate and long overdue.

By the way, undeniable and objective proof that I love her does exist. She recently called to me while I was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. I actually paused an episode of Star Trek to see what she needed!!!! This is essentially the geek version of laying down one's life. 

If that's not True Love, I don't know what is.

Snow Skates

 

Bonanza's TV run was fairly straightforward--14 seasons on NBC from 1959 through 1973. Its comic book history is a little less straightforward, but not that complicated. Dell Comics dedicated four issues of Four Color to Bonanza. In 1962, they put out two issues of a dedicated Bonanza series. 

Then Dell had a sort-of messy divorce with Western Publishing, the company that licensed shows and movies, then produced the comics. Dell then distributed the comics. When the two entities parted with one another, Western created its own distribution company they called Gold Key.  Under the Gold Key banner, Western put out their own Bonanza series. It ran for 37 issues, from 1962 to 1970.

We'll look at one of the stories from Four Color #1221 (Sept.-Nov. 1961). 

"The Snow Walkers" was written by Gaylord Du Bois and drawn by Tom Gill. Gill's clear and effective art is part of what makes this story great, bringing De Bois' excellent script to life. 

If I may pause from the story review for a moment, let's give a shout out to Dell/Gold Key writers De Bois and Paul S. Newman. Both men were incredibly prolific and both wrote strong script after strong script in numerous genres. That Dell/Gold Key consistently produced great comics is in large part because of those two men.

Anyway, "Snow Walkers" begins when a detachment of soldiers arrive at the Ponderosa, hoping to buy some horses. Ben Cartwright wants to sell those horses, but declines to take a bank draft in lieu of cash. Later on, he explains why to his three sons. There were a number of things that were off about the soldiers--details about their behavior that didn't line up with usual military behavior.

The soldiers stay the night in a nearby bunkhouse. A blizzard kicks up and a man named Rolf Thornsen arrives at the door to the ranch house, looking to also spend the night. He's an old friend who is taking mail from California to nearby Virginia City. He travels on what he calls "Snow Skates," which we would call skis.

This is the sort of detail that helps mark Du Bois as a great writer. He did his research. At the time of the Wild West, the term "skis" had not yet been coined. "Snow Skates" is in fact what they would have been called.

In the morning, they get proof that the "soldiers" were in fact deserters. They've murdered the man guarding the horse pen and stolen the horses. They've got quite the head start, but Rolf has an idea. He can help the Cartwrights quickly make their own snow skates and they can essentially cut the bad guys off at the pass.

They run the deserters down at a remote cabin used by an old Indian and his daughter. The Indian has been murdered, but his daughter Birdsong hid in the snow and escaped. So the Cartwrights and Rolf don't have to worry about a hostage situation, but the deserters are holed up in a defensible position.

What follows is a well-choreographed action scene, which includes rolling a large boulder into the cabin, Hoss briefly being taken hostage before a well-aimed rifle shot from Little Joe gives him a chance to beat down on the bad guys, and the eventual surrender of those bad guys. 

The story ends with Ben giving the recovered horses to Birdsong so that she'll have a good dowry for the future. 

It is simply a well-told story. If it suffers at all, it's that Adam, Hoss and Little Joe don't have a chance to show off their own unique personalities and are essentially interchangable. Well, Hoss gets to show off his strength, but a live-action episode would have allowed Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon to individualize the brothers through their performances. 

But it does show Ben as a smart guy and a strong leader. And Gill's art shows off the action in a way that allows us to always understand what's going on. And the panel showing a murdered man's hand sticking out of the snow is an effective way of showing violent death without being overly gruesome. 

Bonanza was an excellent TV series (well, except for those episodes where one of the brothers falls in love and reminds us of that annoying Cartwright Curse). That the comic book adaptation showed the same skill in telling good stories is very much appreciated by fans of classic TV. 

Next week, we'll check in with Spider-Man. And it's only as I write this sentence that I wonder if I was subconciously led by the release of the new Spider-Man movie to decide to look a Spidey comic. If so, it really doesn't matter. We'll be jumping back to the Bronze Age, not looking at anything new.