Radio Recap: The Planet Man

The Planet Man was a juvenile adventure serial with a science fiction setting. It aired as a 15-minute daily syndicated program from 1953.

"This is the fascinating story of Dantro, The Planet Man, troubleshooter for the League of Planets organization, the law enforcement body for peace and justice in the celestial world - whose headquarters and center of operations are situated on the capital of all the planets, Planeria Rex. From Mercury to Pluto, wherever danger threatens the universe, you will find Dantro the Planet Man fighting for fair play."

When I say that Planet Man was juvenile, I mean juvenile. It's high camp, and there's an audience for that. If you're the sort who giggles their way through the 1980 Flash Gordon movie, then Planet Man will live up to your expectations.

The writing on Planet Man is so simplistic that I'm not even certain the creators knew what a "planet" is. I mean, why is our hero Dantro "the Planet Man?" He works for the League of Planets, not a singular planet. Why not "Interplanetary Man?" I mean, anyone from Earth could also claim to be a "Planet Man," just from a different planet than Dantro. But this is a show where the dictator of Mars is named "Marston!" And he has vicious "Marlions!"

Dantro isn't much of hero - he usually manages to get himself captured by the bad guy, leaving it up to one of his many sidekicks (a scientist, scientist's daughter, Texan engineer and two kids) to get him out of hot water. The announcer frequently had difficulty coming up with an appropriate cliffhanger at the end of an episode. Each time he'd spout off a series of questions to engage the listener, but some of them were as lame as, "did Slats set the circuits correctly?" If the question won't even be raised in the succeeding episode, maybe don't bring it up?

You can hear all the surviving episodes of Planet Man in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library collection on the Internet Archive.

Credit, undue

Following on from yesterday's post about Public Domain, I have a few thoughts about a current headline on comic book creators receiving their due credit.

Until recently, Marvel's official credit byline for the character Wolverine cited writer Len Wein with artists Herb Trimpe and John Romita (Romita designed the costume but Trimpe drew the finished comic). As of the recent movie Deadpool and Wolverine, Roy Thomas is now included at the end of the byline. This apparently came about because Thomas has for himself a very cutthroat talent agent - and because Wein, Trimpe and Romita are all deceased. Thomas has been very pleased with himself for getting a co-creator credit on Wolverine, although he did pause to complain that his name was listed last when it "should have" been first in a classic case of "shut up when you're winning."

Until I arrived on the internet in 1998, I didn't realize that Thomas was a bit controversial in comics fandom. I knew him only from his works, from the editorials he wrote on the letters pages of his various Marvel and DC titles over the years. I was especially flummoxed when I began to meet other fans of 1940s super heroes online and discovered none of them seemed to like Thomas' work very much. Why, wasn't it Thomas who did more than any other writer to bring back forgotten heroes of the 1940s to give them new adventures in places like Marvel's Invaders and DC's All-Star Squadron? Sure, they rejoined, and he did more than other writer to retcon 1940s heroes out of existence, kill them off or turn them into villains.

Heck, on at least three occasions Thomas brought out a story where a classic hero comes back, goes insane, turns evil, fights the heroes, then destroys himself (Toro in Sub-Mariner #14; Red Raven in Sub-Mariner #26; Marvel Boy in Fantastic Four #165). That should have been a clue to me.

Thomas' case for being Wolverine's co-creator is that he was the editor of Wolverine's first appearance and participated in the original brainstorming sessions for the character. I'd like to say it's not cricket to claim that this makes you a co-creator, but I'm afraid Marvel has already been building precedent along these lines. The Kamala Khan version of Ms. Marvel has always been credited as a co-creation of editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, writer G. Willow Wilson and artists Jamie McKelvie and Adrian Alphona. With the precedent established, why not take advantage of it?

Well, for one, you could injure your legacy. For Roy Thomas, he's an aging creator (turns 84 this year) and he's not liable to produce more art in the future as counterweight against his present legacy. Thomas was already someone fans had a few misgivings about - now they're looking at him as the true inheritor of Stan Lee's mantle, and not in a good way - that like Stan Lee, he wants to claim more ownership over ideas than he is due.

Comics don't pay very well and offer few incentives to reward loyalty, even for those who put decades of their lives into careers at the major companies. If you view the business from a libertarian dog-eat-dog perspective then sure, Thomas can demand and receive compensation for Wolverine and any other characters whose first appearances he might've edited (which his agent is apparently trying to do). You can "prove" you deserve more credits and more dollars from your corporate publishers. What you can't prove is how it makes you any better than Bob Kane.

For a man who rose up the ranks from fandom, Thomas hasn't had a great reputation within fandom and not because of sour grapes. I'm afraid that when Thomas passes on, fandom will not long mourn him. And that's a pity, because if he would just stick to his actual accomplishments he would leave a legacy to be celebrated.

"He's as short-sighted as he was when he created those damn characters." Public Domain Vol. 1: Past Mistakes review

I recently bought "Past Mistakes," the first collected edition of a new Image Comics series called Public Domain by Canadian writer-artist Chip Zdarsky. I've been a bit on the outside of comics for the last decade so while I was aware of Zdarsky being a creator on titles such as Sex Criminals and Daredevil, Public Domain is the first work of Zdarsky's I've read.

The concept behind Public Domain feels all-too-familiar. Singular Comics are the publishers of a super hero called "the Domain" who was originally created by Syd Dallas and Jerry Jasper. The Domain has become a massive franchise, the character appearing in blockbuster motion pictures. While artist Syd Dallas is invited to film premieres, he sees few other benefits from his creation's success - but as long as the fans are happy, he doesn't complain. Jasper seems to have done much better for himself, perhaps because his sister is the publisher of Singular.

So far, so on the nose. It's a familiar tale in comics, mostly reminiscent of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. But where Public Domain really gets moving is when Jerry's assistant Tanya Ko discovers a document that proves Syd is the true owner of the Domain. Syd doesn't really want to start a legal fight for his propery (especially when US law favours the side with the most money to spend) but over the course of "Past Mistakes" he resolves to fight for his rights for the sake of his sons Miles and Dave. Dave is something of a screw-up who can't hold on to a job, although he's very bright and chipper (possibly due to drug use); Miles appears to be the more grounded and relatable of the two brothers, up until he proves to be a gambling addict with massive debts that need to be paid. It's Miles' debts, above all, that cinches Syd's decision to go after his rights for the Domain.

I blogged before about Stan Lee in my joint review of I am Stan and Stuf' Said, so this blog has already aired my strong feelings on the shabby treatment comic book creators have received from their publishers and the outrageous methods corporations have used to assert control over character copyrights. Public Domain isn't merely a find-and-replace telling of the Lee/Kirby saga, there are also elements of Siegel and Shuster's struggles over Superman and Bob Kane's struggle against all of his betters.

I didn't realize Public Domain was an ongoing series when I bought the trade, I thought it was a single graphic novel - so you might see more posts about Public Domain on the blog in the future, I enjoyed it quite a bit!

Radio Recap: Dear Adolf

Dear Adolf was 6-week long program that aired on NBC from June 21 to August 2, 1942. It was a wartime propaganda program; all of the shows I've surveyed thus far, it's most similar to the Man Behind the Gun. It's unlike that program in that it was driven by a singular creative talent - said talent being author Stephen Vincent Benet. Each episode was written by Benet and drawn from material found in open letters actual people had written "to" dictator Adolf Hitler.

I like Benet, although I can only take so much of him. He was a very pro-American author. Sometimes that was tempered when he would examine his nation's faults. Dear Adolf is not tempered but because it was propaganda being directed against the Nazis, I find it more palatable than other propaganda pieces. It also helps that Dear Adolf was a lean 15-minute program instead of a half-hour. Further, each of Benet's letters was performed as a sort of soliloquy by a first-rate famous performer. The six letters were thus:

1. June 21: "A Letter from an American Farmer" starring Raymond Massey
2. June 28: "A Letter from an American Businessman" starring Melvyn Douglas
3. July 5: "A Letter from an American Laborer" starring James Cagney
4. July 12: "A Letter from an American Housewife" starring Helen Hayes
5. July 26: "A Letter from an American Private" starring William Holden
6. August 2: "A Letter from a Foreign-Born American" starring Joseph Schildkraut

Dear Adolf feels like a Columbia Workshop offshoot, which I mean as high praise; NBC didn't often invest in dramatic programming to the extent CBS did, especially pre-1946 (a lot of Benet's stories were adapted on Columbia Workshop). The Cagney episode alone is a bit of a treat as Cagney didn't perform on radio very often!

The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a playlist collection of Dear Adolf on YouTube.

Radio Recap: The Ghost Corps

The Ghost Corps is another serial adventure program that has very little written about it. the Radio Goldindex dates the series to April and May of 1938; it was a syndicated program by Lou R. Winston syndication but none of the actors are credited (though many of the voices sound familiar).

Much like Omar, the Wizard of Persia, Ghost Corps indulged in orientalism, or put another way, racism... but mostly of a patronizing variant. The Ghost Corps are identified in the program as follows:

"Scattered about the far east at strategic points there live certain quiet, unobtrusive men. Who, banded together under the name of the Ghost Corps, tread the danger trails of romance and adventure. Far-reaching in its peculiar scope of activity, the Ghost Corps is composed of a mere handful of intrepid adventurers owing allegiance to none but C. D. Baker, chief of this mystery-shrouded band of freelance diplomats."

Based in Egypt, K. C. Smith is the hero of these stories, serving as an agent of the Ghost Corps. He's aided by his adept servant Ali (although C. D. Baker is often mentioned he only occasionally appears to give Smith orders). There are 26 episodes of the Ghost Corps divided into 2 13-chapter serials - "The Knives of el Malique" and "the Prayer Rug of Nana Sahib." The closing minute of the final episode sets up a new adventure concerning "the Ming ruby" but with information on this series so scarce, I don't know whether more adventures were recorded or not.

If you want a pulp adventure serial in the manner of Indiana Jones, I think Ghost Corps will deliver for you. There's treasure hunts, booby traps, beautiful women, a chamber that crushes its occupants to death and even ventriloquism. I definitely rank it much higher than Omar, the Wizard of Persia - it has better acting, better sound effects and more music.

There's a collection of the Ghost Corps you can listen to at the Internet Archive.

"We're really going to do this?" Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy review

Perhaps because Jim Starlin had another falling-out with Marvel, Marvel has recently published a few mini-series written by Ron Marz (with artist Ron Lim), who of all Marvel writers has seemed to be the one most sympatico to Starlin's wishes vis-a-vis the manner in which his creations are depicted. In 2022 I blogged about Marz and Lim's Silver Surfer: Rebirth mini-series; last year they teamed up again for the Warlock: Rebirth mini-series, then followed that with Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy. Ron Lim is inked by Don Ho and coloured by Romulo Fajardo Jr.

All three of these series are deliberate efforts at courting nostlagic readers - and I guess it worked, since I bought them! I don't consider myself a great Ron Marz fan, although I did enjoy his 1990s work on Silver Surfer. The real draw for me is to see new interior art by Ron Lim, who has been otherwise turning out variant covers in recent years. Lim was a personal favourite artist of mine in the 1990s and I enjoy seeing him show off his flair for splashy yet carefully composed storytelling.

Like the other two series, Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy is set during the 1990s continuity; it includes the character Legacy (son of Captain Marvel) whom Marz and Lim debuted in the 1990s. Adam Warlock, Gamora and Pip make quick cameo appearances. Thanos shows up; there's also a character called Eve Warlock whom Marz and Lim created for Warlock: Rebirth and plays a pivotal role in this series. The mini-series is concerned yet again with the Infinity Gems, as Mephisto dupes Legacy into giving him the Time Gem. Honestly, to read Marz's stories, you'd think the Infinity Watch were constantly losing track of the gems back in the 90s.

There's also a brief trip to the distant future of "the Last Galactus Story," mainly to acknowledge that in that future Nova was still alive, yet Marz and Lim killed her during their 1990s Silver Surfer stories. It doesn't amount to much other than a brief opportunity to see Nova again (Marz has been pretty unrepentant about killing her way back when).

Silver Surfer: Rebirth - Legacy has a bit of flash and flair to its tale, but mostly it's for those of us with fond memories of reading Marz and Lim's work in the 1990s and enjoy seeing a bit of a remix of those stories.

Radio Recap: High Adventure

High Adventure was a dramatic anthology that started out on Mutual from 1947-1949. Somehow it caught the notice of NBC, who brought it to their network in 1950 and even invested it with a sponsor, Old Spice! Yet High Adventure didn't catch on and resurfaced on Mutual for a final run in 1953-1954.

I've seen the series described by virtually all old-time radio fans as an attempt to duplicate the success of Escape. Of course, Escape only enjoyed a few months with a sponsor so although it was a very well-made program it wasn't a huge success; High Adventure at least had a sponsor during the NBC run yet you'd hardly know it to listen to the series, there's no sense of a change in budget. Old Spice didn't bring in any big name stars, just reduced the drama's running time to squeeze in commercials.

There are a few famous names in the program's final year on the air among the few surviving episodes. Basil Rathbone pops up in a 1953 episode titled "the Hungry Peacock." And the last few episodes of High Adventure feature George Sanders as the series' host. Unfortunately, Sanders sounds extremely bored with his role. His narration is dry to the point of disinterest in what he's saying. Although you'll perk up at his voice - because he did have a terrific voice for radio - you'll lose interest because he can't even bring himself to make the words "High Adventure" sound adventurous.

I don't think this is by any means comparable to Escape and if you expect something similar to Escape, you'll be disappointed. High Adventure did not adapt famous stories nor did it set its tales in exotic locales. Heck, there's nary a poisonous snake to be found. In fact, High Adventure was often a dramatic about characters struggling with interpersonal troubles. A good example of that is the 1950 episode "Wild Pitch," a baseball drama about the rivalry between a catcher and a pitcher and their troubled history.

There are fewer than 2 dozen episodes of High Adventure still in circulation. The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a collection of High Adventure on the Internet Archive.

"Remember me?" Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga review

Recently I was able to celebrate my birthday by watching the film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga in the cinema. I nearly missed seeing this film on the big screen as it didn't do very well at the box office and so was shuffled off to the second-run theatres very quickly. And I certainly knew that this would be a film worth seeing in the theatre.

I'm very fond of Mad Max: Fury Road - I think it was one of the best filmgoing experiences I've ever had because the film itself is such pure cinema - visual storytelling with an unyielding pace and sense of momentum. Even though I had seen all of the previous Mad Max films and thought they were okay (Road Warrior was the best, I thought), I didn't have strong opinions on them. Heck, I didn't have strong opinions on filmmaker George Miller, even though I had seen virtually all of his movies.

The success of Mad Max: Fury Road apparently gave us Miller's 2022 film Three Thousand Years of Longing, an adaptation of an obscure piece of literature that deconstructed fairy tales. That movie came and went with barely anyone other than me paying attention to it, but I suppose it was an indulgence Miller was permitted. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga seems more like the kind of movie a studio would request - something that should definitely bring back those who enjoyed Mad Max: Fury Road. But that movie came out in 2015, so whatever 'heat' surrounded Mad Max at the time has surely cooled; I'm afraid the lukewarm response to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is to be expected.

And that's a shame, because Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a pretty good film. It's not inventive in the way that Mad Max: Fury Road was. In that film, we learned how the world worked as the film unfolded. Immortan Joe, the War Boys, the Citadel, the Green Place, the Vuvalini... Furiosa doesn't only revisit the titular Furiosa, as a prequel it has to -- by necessity -- revisit the people and places we saw in Mad Max: Fury Road. Some of the places we only glimpsed (Gastown, Bullet Farm) are embellished further. But the visuals of the world are kept faithful between the two films and it suffers from that problem with prequels - everything in the film has to end up in a place consistent with where the story begins in the chronologically subsequent picture.

Furiosa has a different feel in part because it doesn't cover a short span of time (Mad Max: Fury Road covered, what, 48 hours in the characters' lives?), instead transpiring over a decade's worth of history. The way the story is broken up with 'chapter' breaks contributes to the different feeling, but it means that although there's plenty of peril and thrills, it lacks the unrelenting momentum of Mad Max: Fury Road. We do eventually get to scenes on a War Rig with the occupants fending off invaders (several of them air-based invaders, lending a welcome variety from the previous film) but the emphasis is on Furiosa's life and struggles. Ultimately it's a story of vengeance directed by Furiosa at the man who killed her mother, but it takes a very long time for her to find the opportunity to claim her vengeance.

It's never boring; it's frequently amazing. If you enjoyed Mad Max: Fury Road you'll enjoy seeing more of that film's world and explanations for the characters' backgrounds. Heck, Furiosa's line in Fury Road - "Remember me?" - uttered to Immortan Joe, now has a context and it's not what I imagined when I saw the earlier film.

Radio Recap master list

So far I've written more than 100 Radio Recaps on this blog; to make it easier to find what I've written in the past, I've added a Radio Recap master list with an A to Z list of every Radio Recap blog post made thus far.

Radio Recap: Majestic's Master of Mystery

Majestic's Master of Mystery was a 7-episode radio serial titled "The Phantom Spoilers" that was syndicated in 1934. Although all 7 chapters still exist, I had a difficult time finding information about the program. Most of my information comes from Otrcat. The series was sponsored by Majestic Radio and starred Maurice Joachim, whom you'll recall as the titular Omar, the Wizard of Persia.

Like Omar, Majestic's Master of Mystery is set in the Middle East and trades heavily on orientalism. Unlike that series, there's a very limited cast; Joachim performs as all of the characters, mostly narrating as he goes. There's a female character in the cast but she never speaks, sparing Joachim from what would have been an embarrassing performance. Considering the show is from 1934 and has just one cast member it sounds okay - there are sound effects, which wasn't typical at the time.

But what makes Majestic's Master of Mystery stand out is the unusual offer that Joachim (as "Master of Mystery") makes in each program, inviting listeners to request a free sandalwood swastika ("the oldest good-luck emblem known to man") that was supposedly personally brought from India by the Master of Mystery. This was, after all, a year after the Nazi party had taken over Germany and made the swastika a national symbol. The makers of Majestic's Master of Mystery seem to have been trying to release swastikas under the "well, actually" guise of its traditional symbology either because they wanted to subvert the Nazis or subvert anti-Nazis. Either way, it's the most interesting thing about the series.

You can hear Majestic's Master of Mystery at the Old Time Radio Researchers Library.

I Watched Movies; I Have Opinions.

Airline travelling is the great opportunity for each of us to discover... what's been in the cinemas recently?

It seems just about every major film takes it turn as an offering presented on the tiny viewscreen located on the back of your neighbour's headrest. On my recent travels I watched four films; three were pretty good, one was rather forgettable.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023) is an adaptation of a play I hadn't heard of, which was itself adapted from a novel by Herman Wouk. I haven't read the novel either, but I knew the story from the 1954 film (The Caine Mutiny) that starred Humphrey Bogart as the commanding officer of the USS Caine, who is persecuted by his subordinates and finally driven into a breakdown during a military court martial. The 2023 version stars Kiefer Sutherland as the officer; it was directed by William Friedkin, his last before his death; sadly it was also the final film appearance of actor Lance Reddick.

As I wrote above, I wasn't aware the book had also been designed to serve as a stage play. I assumed this movie would be a full dramatization of the events leading to the mutiny; instead, it's a courtroom drama with characters discussing their versions of the events in question but with no flashbacks to them. I wonder if Friedkin took an interest in adapting the play because during the pandemic it wouldn't have been too risky to film. I should also note that the story is set in contemporary times, rather than the World War II setting of the original book, play and film.

The film has all of three sets and zero action scenes - it's carried entirely by performances and the performances are very good. This was easily the best of the films I watched; how nice that Friedkin's final picture was such a good one!

American Fiction (2023) was not quite what I was expecting; it's an adaptation of Erasure by Percival Everett and stars Jeffrey Wright as a frustrated literary professor who writes a novel he intends to use as a satire of the works he sees written about black lives and is then shocked when his satire is accepted as a worthy novel by the people whose respect he'd been unable to earn.

I thought American Fiction would be a pretty biting film, but while it is concerned with satire it's not particularly funny. There is a funny sequence where Wright imagines a scene from his book (Keith David turns up as one of the characters), but this is not Spike Lee's Bamboozled, it seldom tries to be funny. It's ultimately about Wright's character and his family and all their personal baggage, with the sensationalized novel creating a plot for the character scenes to hang from. I liked it but it's difficult to recommend.

The Beekeeper (2024) is a Jason Staham action film directed by David Ayer. Surely I've been disappointed by enough Statham movies in the past that I would avoid this, right? And given how vulgar I've found Ayer's films this surely wouldn's be for me, right? Yet I heard a bit of talk about this film on the internet indicating that it was a very satisfying revenge film because Statham's character is being pit against online scammers who cheat people out of their money. And yes, all of that does feel very cathartic to watch.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) is a horror film derived from the sequence in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula where the vessel Demeter ferries Dracula to England while he picks off the crew one by one. I thought isolating that sequence from the novel was a pretty choice for a horror film, but this film doesn't so much adapt the novel as obtain inspiration from it; they don't follow the events as recorded in the ship's log from the novel. Also, the film's rules about vampires are fairly typical Hollywood rules, such as sunlight causing them to burst into flames (which isn't in the Stoker novel). Surprisingly, the movie depicts Dracula as an inhuman creature inspired by Nosferatu even though it's a Universal movie - meaning they could draw from Universal's own history of visuals. It gets pretty ridiculous at times but I suppose I wanted a more restrained movie, faithful to the original text; this film, which features a CGI Dracula with immense bat wings who comes swooping down upon people is many things, but not restrained.