A Western Round-up!

While shopping in my new favorite bookstore, Half-Price Books, I came across Golden Age Western Comics. It's a sturdy hardback from a publisher named Powerhouse Press. The cover is arresting in one way since those faux-bullet holes are actually holes in the front cover. This die-cut approach has been done on comics many a time before, but worked well in this particular instance I thought.

The book is collection of vintage 1950's western stories from an array of now defunct publishers like Avon, Fawcett,  Magazine Enterprises, and American Comics Group. But most of the stuff here comes from comics published by Derby's own Charlton Comics. The forward by Christopher Irving talks about the publishers, focusing properly on Charlton and repeating a lot of things most fans know already. Steve Ditko's name even gets a shout out despite the fact he has not story within a thousand miles of this collection. The editor Steven Brower gives us a few more details on the stories which populate this volume, but not enough for my tastes.

The stories are perfectly representative of the era, which means they vary in quality quite a bit. None are really bad, but many are tepid, produced by pros getting a paycheck and delivering work on a tight schedule. Some rise above this general standard, specifically those by Dick Giordano and Vince Alasica. They draw no fewer than three of the stories here and all are quite capably done. Doubtless these stories were written by Joe Gill but no record of that is given.

There are brave lawmen (Texas Tim Ranger), bold explorers (Daniel Boone and Kit Carson), lovely gun-toting dames (Annie Oakley and Buffalo Belle), familiar movie idols (Lash Larue and Tom Mix), and even a hefty batch of noble savages (Magic Arrow, Little Eagle, Young Falcon, Flying Eagle and Chief Black Hawk). It's a nice sampling of what was available in the comics of the day when westerns sold well and often.

The highlight of the collection for me though was a Masked Raider story by Mike Sekowsky which closes the collection. It's a great example of his supple art from this era and a pretty dang good story too.

I didn't pay full price for this book, nor would I advise anyone to do so. But if you find it heavily discounted like I did, I'd take a chance. There's some fun to be had.

Also on hand was a very pretty volume of more modern western tales from Graphic Classics. These books offer a wide variety of stories and art styles and are not for everyone. But I found myself hooked by this one because it offered up some very handsome artwork.

Riders of the Purple Sage is adapted with lovely artwork by Cynthia Martin who also supplied the cover. Zane Grey's vintage story seems to have been well treated in this colorful version. There are stories by Bret Harte, Willa Cather and even Robert E. Howard. Sadly I didn't much care for the art on the Howard story "Knife River Prodigal", not my style, but it was a pretty dandy story none the less.

The absolute highlight though of this volume is a new Hopalong Cassidy story by Dan Spiegle. Spiegle was the artist on many if not most of Hopalong's earliest adventures and his lush and comfortable artwork sets a very high bar in this collection. Spiegle is totally at home in the genre and offers up a story which would not have looked out of place in any standard collection. Spiegle gets some accolades, but is still not sufficiently appreciated to my mind. His artwork continues to impress and always has.

If you can find it cheap, I'd say this volume is worth the discounted price for Spiegle's work alone. I give this one a limited recommendation.

Be careful out there you owlhoots!

Rip Off

Who Goes There?

Hannes Bok

I was fishing around in my dangerously overly-stuffed garage and stumbled across a box full of vintage Science Fiction Book Club collections. I used to get reams of neat stuff from this venerable source, at one time a ready window to the classics of sci-fi. A lot the books have gone away over time, but I've always kept my "Best of..." collections as a way to maintain access to some of more famous old stories. A few months ago, after finally seeing the most recent "Thing" movie (see here for more), I had the urge to read "Who Goes There?", John W. Campbell's classic story which triggered off some of my favorite sci-fi movie classics, but alas I couldn't find it.

But find it at last I did, and last evening sitting nestled comfortably in my dangerously over-stuffed garage (which I heat and keep a comfortable chair in for just these matters) I read Campbell's classic creepy story for the first time in decades. Needless to say the walk back into the house in the cold darkness was maybe, perhaps a tiny bit more uncomfortable than normal. Great little tale of creeping paranoia this one is.

The tale of an isolated party of Antarctic professional explorers isolated with a dangerous and deadly and recently re-quickened shape-shifting alien from twenty-five million years before and no counting how many miles is a classic scenario, rarely to be matched.

If you would like to read it, it turns out it is available online at this very nifty location. Why I didn't stumble across this resource earlier this summer is anyone's guess. But by all means check it out.

From Doc Savage Fantasy Covers

One of the most intriguing things about the story which I've come across in more recent years is the notion that it is a stealth Doc Savage adventure, Doc being in reality the main character "McReady" (played by Kurt Russell in the John Carpenter movie). I was always rather skeptical, but after reading this tale again, notably published by Conde Nast, the company which holds and still guards the Doc Savage copyright, in Astounding Science Fiction in 1938 it makes me wonder.

McReady is very directly described as a giant man of bronze with bronze hair and eyes and his role in the story is perfectly consistent with what a young and somewhat less experienced Doc might've done in that situation. According to the Wold Newton chronology this tale would've happened prior to Doc forming the Fab Five and officially beginning his good works. I'm sure it a mere coincidence, but it's an above average tantalizing one. If it were a Doc story, it might bear the title "The Three-Eyed Goblin" or "The Twenty-Five Million Year Menace".

Richard Powers

And for those who like comics best, here's a link to an adaptation of the story which appeared in Starstream in the late 70's by  Arnold Drake and Jack Abel. Enjoy!

"Who Goes There?" is a danged good yarn, one that strikes closer to who we think we are than we like.

Rip Off

Spotlight On Charlton!

Charlton Spotlight #8 was just announced and is ready for shipment. For a detailed list of the contents check out this link. Mike Ambrose, a Charlton super-fan of the first rank has managed over the last decade or more to put out eight outstanding issues of this wonderful magazine. Truly labors of love, these highly affordable gems offer riches galore for any fan of the long defunct but still fondly remembered Charlton Comics Group, the little publisher from Derby, Connecticut who for many decades gave the fans an alternative to the big New York houses.

There's no hiding my love for this little company, which was always about the bottom line, but was still able to corral and make good use of talents like Steve Ditko, Pat Boyette, Jim Aparo, Rocke Mastroserio, Joe Gill, Pete Morisi, Dick Giordano, Tom Sutton, George Wildman, and more. Charlton was a training ground for many in the industry, a place to hone those comic book skills for small money, but big opportunity. John Byrne, Joe Staton, Mike Vosburg, Mike Zeck, Wayne Howard, Don Newton, Denny O'Neil, and many others found their way through to greater success by way of Charlton.

This latest issue of Charlton Spotlight focuses on Nicola "Nick" Cuti, one of the great editors and writers of Charlton in its Bronze Age heyday and the guy who along with Joe Staton dreamed up my all-time favorite superhero, the totally awesome E-Man. On top of that this issue features the debut of Tom Sutton's unpublished Doomsday +1 story, a long-hidden Charlton gem.

Get yourself a copy. And while you're at it, check out the awesome back issues, all of which are still available. Below is a cover gallery of those past issues. And say hi to Mike, tell him I sent you.

Rip Off

Clod Of Thunder!

With The Mighty Thor obviously dominating the comic news cycles lately, it's not really any surprise that as many outlets as possible are trying to jump onto the Asgardian bandwagon. But I have to confess I didn't see this offering from Archie Comics coming. Walt Simonson presents an exceedingly tasty rendition of the Riverdale teens as neo-Asgardians. But truth told Moose would've been a better candidate for the Thor role. And where's Reggie, an ideal Loki counterpart?

Simonson does a nice job of echoing the structure of this classic Thor cover from his epic run. The farther we get from this fantastic series of issues, the more clear it is that Walt really tapped into something special, something few have been able to find, the perfect balance between sci-fi and classic myth which makes the Thor stories hum with a truly unique dynamic.

Here's the other Archie cover available for these stories by Ed Ruiz and Bob Smith, this one offering a glimpse of an evil Reggie, though he doesn't wear any Asgardian togs.

Rip Off

Where No Gum Had Gone Before!

In the spirit of their highly excellent Mars Attacks book which I took a look at a few weeks ago, this little tome showcasing Star Trek cards hit the book racks of my local retailer several weeks ago. There is an unalloyed charm to these books which capture a seemingly more naive time before the engines of industry had fully coordinated all aspects of marketing and trends, and fads could bubble up (pun intended) from some offbeat directions.

At the time that Topps put out their Star Trek card sets, all properly packaged with the inevitably inedible gum, they were responding to the mid-70s' uptick in interest in the series which had been revived from network doom and was finding unexpected success in syndication across the nation. The bicentennial year of 1976 was not one which knew that Star Trek was an unstoppable franchise, but merely a sci-fi TV show that was finding fans all across the country.

In spite of the juggernaut Star Trek would become after the eventual movie arrived, Topps found these cards pretty much a bust. They only did one series and it's speculated that's the reason not all the episodes are represented in this series, something saved for the sequel. But there was no proper sequel, though Topps tried again when the movie did strike a chord some years later.

One oddity is that Sulu doesn't make a single appearance on these cards. Now considered a core member, he is somehow forgotten in all the furor to gather the images (from fan sources it is reported) and doesn't get any type of shout out. That oversight is corrected in the new book which comes with some bonus cards, one of which does finally at last give Sulu is due.

This is a fun little book, and something any fan of the original series might want to take a look at.

Rip Off

The Mouse Of Color!

Fantagraphics continues to impress with their ongoing reprints of Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse comic strips from the 30's and beyond. Just in time for the holiday season, they've released the two-volume collection of Gottfredson's Color Sundays comics work featuring the Mouse and his cohorts as they gambol across the pages and the ages having wild adventures and pulling off wild gags. 

If you don't see yourself wanting to get bogged down with the ongoing black and white Mickey adventures by Gottfredson, these color gems produced over seven years are a wonderful peek into what all the hubbub was about. Actually there's not enough early Gottfredson Mickey work to fill two volumes so the second features his work from later decades and with other Disney characters such as the Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

Available in a handsome and sturdy slipcase, this is best way to get these gems. They cost a bit more, but not much more than the individual volumes and the slipcase makes displaying and keeping them much easier, at least it does for me.

These are beautiful comics, backed up with detailed and informative background information by people who both love the charcters, the comics, and know of what they speak.

This one gets my highest recommendation.

Rip Off

A Most Savage Family Affair!

Today is a most propitious day according to Philip Jose Farmer and his Wold Newton theories. Today is the birthday of one Doctor James Clarke Wildman., better known in his ficitonal guise as "Doc Savage" whose real life was mostly documented by "Kenneth Robeson" the pseudonym for a few men but mostly for Lester Dent.

For the very few who might not know, Philip Farmer's Wold Newton notion suggests that many if not most of the wonderful heroes we celebrate in fiction are actually real or based on real folks who have themselves an elaborate connection with one another because their ancestors in the early 18th century encountered a meteor which irradiated them producing some spectacular examples of humanity among whom are The Shadow, Fu Manchu, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan of the Apes and Doc Savage.

Farmer puts for his theory in grand and detailed fashion in Doc Savage:  His Apocalyptic Life. This epic tale of the "true story" of the great pulp hero details his upbringing and the life stories of his five assistants as well as his cousin Pat. It was in many ways my introduction to the world of Doc Savage when I first fog my mitts on the Bantam paperback a few decades ago. It's been huge fun over the last few weeks to revisit this classic along with its prequel (more later).

Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life was most recently published in a definitive form this past summer by Altus Press as edited by Win Scott Eckart to reflect new additions to the canon and reflect the modern reprint programs which have brought the classic tales back into ready circulation. It's a hoot to read about Doc and his Fab Five as if they were real, it's a wonderful ploy which gives a bit of spice to stories already brimming.

But it's not the first book to read.

Tarzan Alive is the beginning of all this speculation. In this tome Farmer offers up a detailed biography of the man we know as "Sir John Clayton, Lord Greystoke" or more famously "Tarzan of the Apes". Again those names are not the real names, merely the ones concocted by Edgar Rice Burroughs when he was contacted to related the wild adventures of a man raised by exceedingly apish proto-humans. Much of what we learn about Tarzan is true, but much is not and despite the fact this book along with its Doc Savage sequel were originally published in the 70's we can be rather confident that both Doc and Tarzan still live.

Tarzan Alive has recently been made available in a definitive and beautiful form by Bison Books. Do yourself a favor, learn the "truth" about these great iconic heroes. Pull back the curtain and peek to see what wonders lie just behind the conceit we call fiction.

Today would be a great day to start. Happy birthday Doc, wherever you are.

Rip Off