Prince Valiant - The Movie!

Believe it or not, I've never ever seen the 50's Prince Valiant movie. For whatever reason it's never ever played TV around me, and the few times I remember seeing the VHS I never popped for it.

But reading the original Hal Foster strips recently got me in the mood and I ordered up a copy of the DVD from Amazon. I got around to viewing it several days ago. Now I watch movies on a smallish TV, and that clearly wasn't what this Cinemascope flick was meant to be seen on. In a wondeful letterbox, this looks fantastic. It's a wonderfully rich visual movie and coming fresh off the Foster originals, it's easy to see that they reallly worked to keep the look and feel of the comic strip intact on the movie.

Robert Wagner is Valiant and he looks the part well enough. Hayden Sterling is Gawain and Janet Leigh is Aleta. The acting by this trio is pretty okay most of the time, but Wagner is uneven, while Sterling is really broad. Liegh is beautiful as is Debra Paget as Ilene her sister, and they both do adequate jobs. James Mason as Brack is clearly though the best actor in this thing and he dominates the screen everytime he shows up. The only actor on par with him is Victor McLaglen as Boltar who has few scenes, but choice ones.

Aside from the indifferent acting, though the setting is magnificent and the epic scale of the storytelling really works most of the time. The sprawling battle in the Viking castle with Sligon is outrageous and captures the feel of the comic strip perfectly, with Valiant bouncing around with is creative battle techniques.


This ain't a great movie, but it's a really lavish and crisp adaptation of the comic. I'd have to say it's one of the best and most accurated adaptations of a comic I've ever seen and I've seen nearly all of them.

Highly recommended.



Rip Off

Laying Down The L.A.W. !

I very much remember anticipating this "return" of the Action-Heroes under the hand of Dick Giordano and Bob Layton. This project apparently was stalled a few times before it finally came out from DC at the very beginning of the current century. Like most of the product of that time, it was hooked into the JLA, a major seller for DC and the source of countless spin-offs and one-shots. L.A.W. was seen by many as just one more of those.

But for Charlton fans it was special. It featured the return of the "original" Action-Heroes. Sarge Steel, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, The Question, Nightshade and a new Peacemaker all play roles in the story, but the story itself was sculpted around the return of Rip Jagger, The Judomaster. This is a Judomaster story, though I will confess that focus does get muddled a bit as the story unfolds.

A powerful enemy named The Avatar (take that James Cameron) unleashes demons on the Earth and locks up the JLA in a dimensional trap. He seems unstoppable, but then Sarge Steel is put in charge of a group of heroes including Blue Beetle and the Question to battle the threat. He finds himself working out of a sprawling new project which gives birth to a new Peacemaker, a doctor. This force seeks out the Avatar's threat despite the lurking of traitors inside the project. Meanwhile Captain Atom has become a power source for the Avatar and will remain like that through much of story being reborn in a new costume before it's all over. Blue Beetle reveals a hidden guilt and the Question must come to terms with his lack of power in this battle against great evil. Nightshade is the most changed and seems literally to be battling for her very soul in the story. Sarge Steel is seduced and given the chance to be made whole again, but must stand strong. All the heroes seem to have an internal struggle alongside the external threat.

That threat is posed by Avatar who it is revealed relatively early is actually Tiger, formerly the partner of Judomaster who in a fit of teenage pique rejects the tutelage of his master and begins his fall into villainy. Judomaster meanwhile has obtained nirvana in Nanda Parabat but must give that up to rejoin the world and confront his corrupted partner. His struggle is the heart of the story.

This is a very uneven story though I'll have to confess despite my affection for it. It seems it was done in at least two stages looking at the artwork. The story itself is an a bit of a mishmash, offering many interesting angles and solving most of them, but not always convincingly.

I want to adore the L.A.W., but alas I only like it. I do recommend that you seek it out if you can find it. It's never been collected alas. It should be, everything else is available for heaven's sakes.

Rip Off

The Charge Of The Light Brigade!

This is a movie I picked on a whim with a bunch of other Errol Flynn adventure flicks. I'd never seen it before viewing it a few days ago, but I was much impressed. It's not as rock solid a movie as Captain Blood nor even Sea Hawk but it is rousing, especially the climax which I found quite exciting.

The movie tells the tale of a pair of brothers (Flynn and Patrick Knowles) in love with the same woman (Olivia DeHaviland) and how they comport themselves with dignity and bravery on the rugged landscape of the Khyber Pass and the valleys of the Crimean War. There's a ruler of the mythical land of Suristan who has been cut off financially by the British and seeks an alignment with the Russians, but who bears a grudge and leads his forces to commit an atrocity at a British fort. The climatic battle at Balaclava, the infamous charge, is in this version an attempt by the British forces to get even for this heinous crime.

Errol Flynn does a bang up job as does David Niven, who plays his sidekick. Niven is stalwart, but human too in this tale of bravery and nobility. Olivia DeHaviland has little to do frankly in this tale of manly men, but she's certainly pretty enough. Nigel Bruce (of Sherlock Holmes fame) is in this one and plays a wonderfully dotty commander who nonetheless turns out to be a man of skill and dignity.

And that's what this rousing tale seems to be most about. It's the dignity of man which is at stake, whether it is how a brother will deal with a cuckolding by his brother or answer the massacre of a bloodthirsty enemy, it's not what he does so much but how he'll face up to the inevitable.

Pretty good movie. Recommended.

Rip Off


The Charge Of The Light Brigade

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson


Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Steve Ditko's Strange Suspense!

Wow! I read about this online but dismissed it since I have many of the stories in B&W from Greg Theakston's various efforts. But one glimpse of the actual book showed me I wanted this despite its nigh forty dollar price tag.

Well a few days ago I emptied my change can which yielded plenty of loose jack to bring this baby home. I collect change for just this sort of mad money experience. And so (with my beloved wife's permission) I went and gathered this gem up.

This is pretty much a pure Charlton reprint collection, though there are a few stories from other publishers. Since Charlton won't drag the fanboys in but Ditko will, I understand the packaging, but still and all it's interesting that this might just be the biggest Charlton reprint volume in my collection. The only others close would be the DC Archives with Ditko's Blue Beetle, Question and Captain Atom work.

The volume is pretty neatly done, with a beautiful cover and dandy binding. There are lots of covers and even a few stories not of the horror persuasion. I've read the non-Charlton stuff at this point and there's a romance and a western. The rest of the issue seems to be pure pre-Code horror with a humor piece at the end. Great great cover images. Some of the covers he did for The Thing are very disturbing and stick in the mind.

Highly recommended, so check out those change bowls right away.

Rip Off

The Prisoner Of Zenda!

I spent a lovely afternoon last weekend enjoying two classic flicks, both using pretty much the very same script.

The first was the classic The Prisoner of Zenda from 1937 starring Ronald Coleman and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. If ever a movie were perfectly cast this is the one. Ronald Coleman absolutely owns the screen as Rudloph Rassendyll the man called upon to pretend to be the kidnapped King and save the nation from ruin. The only time that isn't the case is when Fairbanks is on screen as Duke Hentzau a dastardly villain of epic dimension. This is the most magnetic I've ever seen Fairbanks, as he crafts a classic screen badguy. Others in the cast include Raymond Massey as Michael the grim brother of the King, and C.Aubrey Smith (who many decades before played Rassendyll for goodness sakes) as the King's right-hand man Zapt, that chiseled face an absolute wonder for the screen. The faces in this movie are sterling examples of classic cinema. The action sequences are bristling and exciting.


Less impressive is the 1952 remake with Stewart Granger as Rassendyl, with Deborah Kerr as the love interest. Granger has always struck me as a bit of an oaf in his movies, a good-looking lunk. That's about what's going on here as this movie only adds color to a virtual scene-by-scene remake of the original. No one in the remake is as good as anyone in the original with the possible exception of Kerr who emotes a tiny bit more than Madeleine Carrol as the Princess Flavia. Even James Mason, a great actor falls short of the heights Fairbanks brought to the Hentzau role. The action is a bit broader, but not as exciting.

Get those movies. I heartily recommend the Coleman version, a classic of adventure and romance!

Rip Off

The Judomaster Reports #11

Judomaster #98 is dated December 1967. The single credit is the name "McLaughlin" hidden along a rockface on the splash page which features Judomaster holding a flying reptile at bay with a spear while Suzi turns in fear. It's another angle on the cover image by Frank McLaughlin who did this and all the Judomaster covers as far as I can tell.

"The Isle of Dragons" begins with Rip Jagger being called into the office of General Hawkins where he learns that the Japanese are using some remote and possibly uncharted islands as potential bases. On one island named Tabuki which the natives call "The Isle of Dragons". An airplane photo shows a skeptical Rip that indeed there do seem to be giant reptiles on the island. Judomaster, Tiger, Bushiri, Suzikawa, and other warriors go by submarine to the island and attempt to get on land. They are almost immediately waylaid by natives who tell that the Japanese are indeed contstructing a base and they are making use of the ancient dragons too. The natives guide the group to an ancient city and then leave. Judomaster's team is then assaulted by a giant flying reptile and all seek shelter in a cave when a second dinosaur resembling a Tyrannosaurus Rex appears. But it turns out that in the mad dash for safety that Tiger and Suzi are missing. Judomaster goes out to find them. He goes to the city and finds a costumed figure calling himself the "Japanese Sandman" who tells one of his comrades about using his powers to put creatures to sleep to capture both Suzi and Tiger. About that time a giant lizard appears and Sandman uses his hypnotic power along with tranquiler bullets the Japanese troops fire to subdue and develop a control of the beast. He then makes ready to ready to make Suzi and Tiger the creatures next meal when it awakes. Having seen enough Judomaster attacks, frees his associates and taking guns they head back to the cave. But the encounter the Tyrannosaur again but use their rifles to put it down. Then they gather Bushiri's men and the whole group attack the Japanese troops in the city. Judomaster tracks down the Sandman and avoiding his hypnotic powers eventually defeats the villain. When the Sandman is put out of the way, the monsters which have been in his thrall are released and they demolish the city and the Japanese troops are stunned that their tranquilizers no longer are effective. Using dynamite they brought Judomaster and Tiger blow up the whole shebang and escape. The last scene shows them rafting to the submarine and Tiger reveals that he had substituted regular ammunition for the special tranquilizers the Japanese used thus making the monsters uncontrollable. That scamp.

Sarge Steel turns up one more time in a story with no credits but clearly drawn by Dick Giordano and scripitng attributed at GCD to Steve Skeates. The tale titled "Key West Caper" is File 115. It begins with Sarge coming out of the ocean in full scuba gear onto a deserted beach at night. He thinks back to finding his office ransacked and a note saying that Bessie his secretary had been kidnapped and taken to a location off the Florida Keys. He then gets transportation and gets to the Keys as quickly as he can and arrived at that spot. He is attacked by a guard but subdues him and then recognizes the machine gun the thug used. There is another shot and Sarge kills the sniper but others get the drop on him and take him to a house where Bessie is unconscious on a table. The villains turn out to be Eric Rinn and Roja a man and woman team of baddies who had battled Sarge a few times in his own book and had run an operation named POW. They gloat that they at last have Sarge in this power when Bessie awakes and a fight breaks out. Rinn tries to shoot Sarge who shoots him first making his shot go astray and kill Roja. Bessie grabs up a machine gun and after quick tutelage from Sarge levels the other thugs. Sarge then cradles the overwrought woman in his arms as the story closes.

"The Power of the Bow" is the text piece in this issue and talks about the impact of the bow and arrow as a weapon in Europe, China and the Americas.

This is the last issue in the Charlton Judomaster run.



But in Captain Atom #89 dated December 1967, Tiger shows up in the Nightshade back-up feature by Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo and in this story set in the modern day he is grown up and had trained Eve Eden the Nightshade some years before when she was a girl of fourteen.


This issue of Judomater was reprinted in the late 70's under the Modern imprint.

The Judomaster series showed a remarkable amount of skill and talent on the part of Frank McLaughlin who went on to become one of the great inkers at both Marvel and DC. Dick Giordano who headed up the Sarge Steel back-up feature of course went over to DC and became a major player in comics for many decades to come. Judomaster disappeared.


Even when DC picked up the Charlton Action-Heroes including Judomaster he was barely used. Captain Atom and Blue Beetle got ongoing series as well as stints in the Justice League. The Question had an ongoing of his own for many years. The Peacemaker got a limited series. Even Thunderbolt had a run, though his rights have reverted to the Morisi estate today. Though DC mucked with the heroes they at least used them. That is all of them save Judomaster. He did make cameos here and there and other Judomasters have shown up over the decades, including one who is in the JSA today. Rip Jagger and Tiger were the core of the L.A.W. (Living Assault Weapons)limited series by Bob Layton and Dick Giordano along with other Charlton heroes. But likely because of his WWII setting Judomaster never got the push the others did. It's too bad. Rip Jagger is a dandy character.

Judomaster battled against the Japanese but alongside other Asians so that the racism that clouded many WWII efforts was undermined. He wore the colors of the Japanese for goshsakes, an image that has always been a bit confusing. But in the end Rip Jagger, the Judomaster was truly an action-hero, a man fighting in what we naively dub the last "good war".

No more to come. It's been a blast doing this detailed read for one of my all-time favorite series. I'll have to do another one soon.

Rip Off

The Judomaster Reports #10

Judomaster #97 is dated October 1967. Story and art are credited to Frank McLaughlin.

The lead story is titled "This One's For Pop!" and begins with Rip Jagger and Tiger heading back to the U.S. and Rip returning to his college alma mater an ivy league school named Bridgeport. Rip takes Tiger into the gym area where he meets up with his old boxing coach Pop McKeon. Soon after a former classmate and now professional boxer Rocky Vars shows up. Rip notices that Pop seems agitated at Rocky's arrival as he and Tiger leave. They later attend a series of matches between Bridgeport and New Haven and it comes down to the final bout featuring Pop's new star Johnny. But after doing very well in the match, Johnny takes a dive to lose the match. Rip goes to see Pop about it but he denies it, and so does Johnny when Rip confronts him. Rip sends Tiger to follow Pop then heads to Pop's home where he meets Joanne McKeon, Pop's daughter who has grown up since Rip left. She leaves to go on a date with Rocky Vars. Then Tiger shows up and reports what he has seen following Pop, specifically a meeting with a shadowed figure which confirms that something illicit is going on. Pop shows up at his house and Rip confronts him again and he finally admits that Rocky Vars has been behind the scheme and has threatened Joanne's life. Rip then becomes Judomaster and confronts Rocky and the two put on gloves and have a boxing bout, which goes well enough for Judomaster until Rocky kicks him then Judomater beings to use his other skills and finally knocks out Rocky. Then one of Rocky's henchmen pulls a gun, but Tiger and Johnny appear and soon enough the gang is subdued. Johnny then admits he loves Joanne and the story ends with the lovers kissing and Judomaster and Tiger slipping away out the door.

Sarge Steel returns in a story written by Steve Skeates, drawn by Dick Giordano and again with A.Machine on letters. The story is title "Case of the Widow's Revenge" and it is File 114. The story begins with a car trying to run down Sarge at a local newsstand but missing and demolishing the newsstand killing the proprietor a blind man we only see in profile named Old Charlie. Sarge then runs down an alley when he hears footsteps and is soon shot at, but he returns fire and kills his attacker. Returning to his car he finds a beautiful woman wrapped in a fur stole waiting for him. She claims to be the niece of Donald Reynolds a man Sarge sent to prison and who died there. His wife is the one behind the attempts on Sarge's life along with his old partner a man named Ralph Gonner. Sarge then goes to Gonner's house and confronts him becomes convinced he's not involved. Returning home he finds a figure in the dark waiting for him, but quickly turning on the lights blinds the person and after a quick exchange of gunfire he finds the girl who turns to be the daughter of Reynolds and not his niece and she is the one behind the plot. She dies in Sarge's arms and he reminds us all what a rotten world it is.

"Flips and Counters with Judomaster" offers up four letters. There is some discussion of Charlton's cover design specifically the image of Judomater breaking a board which has been an emblem since early in the series. Giordano say he's phasing that out with the next issue. Also of some question are the Japanese characters which are part of the decoration on the top banner of the comic alongside Judomaster's head. Giordano says he's been told by McLaughlin they have something to do with Judo, but he's not sure what exactly. Giordano also speaks to a the question of credits and says flat out that Frank McLaughlin has "written and drawn every issue of JM to date". This seems consistent save for the debut which lists Joe Gill as the scripter. Doubtless McLaughlin plotted that issue also.

This is a neat little issue. The story gets Judomaster stateside again and if the series had continued, I'm curious how much of his past life we would've eventually have seen. There is the neat notion here that his training as a boxer helped him master his judo skills more quickly perhaps. Because he is the scripter of the debut Joe Gill is almost always mentioned as the co-creator of Judomaster. But it seems pretty obvious that Frank McLaughlin is the guy behind the character through and through. Gill as great as he was, seems to get a bit of glory he doesn't quite deserved in this instance.

Below are some original art images from this story. These are the last five pages of the tale.






One more to come.

Rip Off