Dr. Cyclops!

I'm spending my month of October consuming some of the most entertaining sci-fi and monster flicks out there. A few years I picked up the two Universal Sci-Fi collections sold exclusively for a time at Best Buy and now available in one complete set on Amazon.

I'm starting with the real oddball in the mix, the 1940 Ernest B. Schoedsack production of Dr.Cyclops. This movie by one of King Kong's creators hits many of the same notes with an expedition finding danger on a grand scale in the remote jungle. This time though instead of a giant ape threatening wee humans, the humans get shrunk by the mad scientist Dr.Thorkel who then tries to murder them all before they can derail his crackpot schemes for world domination.

This is a movie that starts out excellently with some truly macabre scenes where Paul Fix plays the man who brought the eccentric Thorkel to the jungle and a radium deposit of magnicent proportions. The lighting is luried and shimmers as the madness of the tale reveals itself. Sadly the movie never achieves the wonderful power of the opening, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have virtues.


Thorkel calls in some respected scientists to check up on his work and then dismisses them summarily when they've done the meager work. Their pride will not allow them to leave and so they fall victim to Thorkel's power. He shrinks them and the myopic scientist becomes a "Cyclops" threatening the small group throughout the remainder of the movie.

It's right after they get shrunk that the tone of the movie undergoes a regrettable change and the well-developed tension is allowed to dwindle. We watch the shrunken humans (a blowhard elder scientist named Bullfinch, a beautiful assistant , a reluctant engineer, a itinerant fortune hunter, and Thorkel's own hispanic helper named Pedro) try to survive and the movie becomes more mild adventure rather than the great horror pic began as.

Albert Dekker as Dr.Cyclops is pretty good, though you do get weary of his mugging by the end of the flick. The greatest weakness I think is the odd shift in tone and the fact the romantic couple played by Thomas Coley and Janice Logan never seems credible to me. She's pretty spunky and he's a bit of a laconic lout.

The movie does look great from time to time, mostly when Cyclops is putting on his exotic headgear to watch radiation play across the bodies of his victims or when he's tweaking his machinery, which always seems to be doing.

This is a pretty decent movie, but when you realize what it might have been given the wonderful opening it's a shame.

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Godzilla - The King Of Blues!

France

Germany

Poland
I found these posters of Japan's number one monster at this link. I was struck by how often posters seemed to render the Black & White "King of Monsters" as blue in color. Why blue?


And does that mean he should take on the Gold Key version of King Kong, another blue classic monster?

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When Bugs Talk!

Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers
Dick Dillin & Shelly Moldoff
Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers
Murphy Anderson
Dick Dillin & Shelly Moldoff
It's never good when insects start conversing.

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MetaMaus!

I had the unusual pleasure of driving home after work yesterday and catching an interview on NPR with Art Spiegelman about a new book from him called MetaMaus which offers up some background to his classic Maus. It's hard to believe that it's been over twenty-five years since those tomes came out and gave comics something the mainstream could talk about.


I did enjoy Spiegelman's note of mild frustration that Maus has been tagged as kiddie lit, since that's clearly because of the format. "Adults" can only take comics just so seriously after all. He also quoted his wife suggesting that the two great accomplishments of his career were Maus and the fact that he'd kept Maus from becoming an inevitably lame movie.


Here's a link to the whole thing.

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Moonestone's Heap!

A friend of mine, also a teacher, gets scuds of coverless comics to share out to his students. He asked to identify one handful of such books and from the ads I knew immediately it was a Moonstone book and soon I knew it was their Heap revival from earlier this year.

I remember seeing this advertised and seeing on the stands. I don't usually go for new comics, but I sometimes make an exception for Moonstone and this Heap comic didn't look all that bad. But I didn't get it, and soon enough forgot it.

But I ended up with a few minutes at the end of my planning period yesterday and I found a copy of this coverless comic and gave it a quick reading. It wasn't too bad actually. This Heap is a Nordic deity of sorts blended with a human WWI airplane pilot. The swamp area seems to have been infused with Runic magic and later the plane crashed there. In WWII the Heap rises and confronts the Nazis who are chasing a girl. One of Odin's Ravens in human shape shows up and fills the Heap in on his background, though he himself surprised at the human qualities.

The story ends abruptly, and typical for modern comics all too quickly. But I have to confess I was interested the whole way through.


I still think I prefer the older Skywald versions of the Heap, and I have to confess to knowing next to nothing about the original Airboy version, though I do see the echoes in his origin story.


Here's a very groovy link to the Skywald version in Black and White.

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Bug Collectors!

Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers
Dick Dillin & Shelly Moldoff
Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers
Though it's not humans collecting insects, but the other way around.

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Boyette's Spencer Spook!

Ron Fantz's Ace Comics was a short-lived company that put out some curious reprints alongside some offbeat new material from Charlton veterans Steve Ditko and Pat Boyette. Ditko revived superheroes like Daredevil, Skyman and The Face. Boyette in particular did some juicy work for the brand, some of it original stuff created by him.


Among that work was a revival of the non-Boyette character Spencer Spook, a ghostly character from American Comics Group who according to this info pre-dated Casper by a bit. Boyette did some new stories featuring this vintage ghost, and he did some really interesting covers to boot.





Probably not Boyette
Here's part of an article (mostly about Steve Ditko's role in the company) where Frantz talks about how Boyette and Joe Gill got involved with Spencer.

Acting on pure impulse, I decided to jump in and buy the rights to Spencer Spook. Because most of the golden age stories had been written and drawn by animators working for Warner Bros. or Disney, I thought there might be enough public interest to justify a new publication featuring the character.

Starting from scratch, I was fortunate to have known artist Pat Boyette for a number of years. When I asked Boyette if he would be interested in drawing some new Spencer Spook stories, he agreed with very little convincing on my part.

Jerry De Fuccio, the former associate Editor of Mad Magazine, consented to write a script for the first issue. Unfortunately, De Fuccio was not especially enamored with the assignment. After several weeks passed, it became apparent that De Fuccio would not be able to produce a script. For this reason, it became necessary to find another writer.

When I asked Boyette if he knew of anyone, he suggested Joe Gill. I could not have asked for a more qualified writer. Gill had written hundreds of comic book stories during his prolific career which began with Marvel Comics in 1945. Working with Gill proved to be a pleasure. All I had to do was tell Gill what I wanted. Then, in a matter of days, a finished script would be sitting on my desk. Gill made it all look remarkably easy.

For the complete article check out this link.

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