Not of This World! event at the Marvel Appendix

We're hosting a special event this week at the Marvel Appendix - lots of new profiles about extraterrestrials of the Marvel Universe. So far a couple of mine have appeared: Kraggoom and Zo! You can see all of the event profiles on the update page!

Radio Recap: Everyman's Theatre

Everyman's Theatre was a radio series that ran on NBC from the fall of 1940 to the spring of 1941. We appear to have only 4 circulating episodes at present.

Everyman's Theatre is notable because it was written and directed by Arch Oboler and was one of his first dramatic programs following his successful stint as the head of Lights Out. Of course, there's a lot of confusion in Oboler's back catalog with regards to what scripts belonged to which shows. He repeated scripts fairly often throughout his career - and some well-intentioned fans have circulated (for example) episode of Arch Oboler's Plays as though they were episodes of Lights Out.

Even thought Oboler didn't originate Lights Out, that's the program he's most identified with and I think it really helps fans to check out other examples of his work in order to better understand what specifically he brought to Lights Out, as opposed to what was carried over from Wyllis Cooper's heyday. Oboler claimed in the first episode that this series was one which was made for "every man and every woman." In Everyman's Theatre we get a few different sides to Oboler's writing; we get Oboler's the romantic, Oboler the human rights advocate and Oboler the horror producer. Just examine these four surviving episodes:

• "This Lonely Heart" (October 4, 1940) a dramatization of the love between Tchaikovsky and his "dear friend."
• "This Precious Freedom" (October 11, 1940) a businessman returns home to find fascism has taken root in America.
• "Cat Wife" (October 18, 1940) nagging wife becomes meowing wife.
• "The Women Stayed at Home" (December 20, 1940) a war widow tends to a German prisoner.

"This Lonely Heart" is perhaps the most instructive to OTR fans. It's told primarily by the female lead Nazimova as she presents a first-person singular drama but at various times other voices fade in to respond to her memories. The fade-in/fade-out voices were heard frequently in Lights Out and in "This Lonely Heart" he demonstrated it had uses outside of horror. But much of what remains of Everyman's Theatre is very much like Lights Out. "Cat Wife" is a notorious episode of Lights Out and one I think fans either love or hate; it's much easier to love the Lights Out version because Boris Karloff starred in it; Everyman's Theatre was not so honoured. But "This Precious Freedom" with Raymond Massey is an interesting and nightmarish drama about a fascist version of the USA. It is, however, a bit nebulous, the way in which the entire nation has changed so suddenly and no one wants to resist the authoritarian regime but also they don't want to warn Massey about what he's walking into; it's a bit surreal like Oboler's unfortunately campy film The Bubble, but Massey's performance remains very strong and carries the drama.

The Digital Deli has an excellent article and radio log about this program.

Radio Recap: The Air Mail Mystery

Welcome back to my occasional "Radio Recap" series!

I usually examine old-time radio programs from the 1940s and 1950s. By the 1940s, music cues and sound effects had been well-established. As well, more than a decade of experimenting through the 1930s had improve the quality of radio writing, acting and producing. 1930s radio programs have a certain modest charm to them because they're much simpler than the type of programs which succeeded them.

Take for instance the Air Mail Mystery. This was a syndicated serial that ran for only 13 chapters 1932. There was also a motion picture of that name the same year but they're not connected. The premise of the program - someone wrecking and robbing air mail planes - was a popular one in 1930s popular culture. I don't know how common it was in real-life (I'll guess not very common) but the concept of stealing from an airplane creates opportunities for drama and mystery that can't be exploited in tales of truck or train robberies - it's fertile ground for imaginative authors. Heck, it led to probably the best Mickey Mouse story of all time, "the Mail Pilot" (in Floyd Gottfredson's comic strip)!

The solution to the Air Mail Mystery might disappoint you because the culprit is... too obvious. Along the way the play is very melodramatic - lots of bits where characters repeat information to each other. Whenever a person is about to deliver a vital clue you can safely assume an unseen figure will try to kill them. Yet for all that, by the standards of 1932 dramatic radio it's pretty good. There are attempts at creating unusual sound effects in the play, such as the distorted voices that come through the air pilots' radios. And I heard a number of familiar voices in the play although I can't be certain about all of them; one sounds a lot like Frank Nelson and another might be Nicholas Joy.

The best playlist I've found for this series is this one at YouTube.

Valentine's Day at the Marvel Appendix!

I hope you had a fine Valentine's Day! I've been stepping up my involvement at the Marvel Appendix website again and for the first time, I decided to contribute special Valentine's Day themed character profiles to the site. I chose four different Atlas comics characters because, for all that's changed in how I feel about Marvel, my love for Atlas never diminishes. The four represent different aspects of the Marvel universe; one is Zelda Coyne, the first romance comics character I've added to the site; another is Gwen Saunders, the first western romance character I've added to the site; third, I covered a horror character who happened to be a great romanic, Boris Zorrel; finally, I covered the main man himself, St. Valentine!

I hope you enjoy them!

Retrospective: Larry Hama's 2010-2022 G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

Last year IDW's use of the G.I. Joe license came to an end, which meant it was the final year in which they published Larry Hama's G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, ending the series at issue #300. If you know anything about the history of the Real American Hero action figures then you know that Larry Hama is the single most important person in the toys' development because he was the one who came up with the backgrounds and personalities for the figures. Over the decades there have been plenty of departures from what Hama established - be it cartoons, feature films or alternate continuities in the comics - but even if all they used were the codenames Hama created, that would be enough.

For that reason, I didn't take much interest of IDW acquiring the G.I. Joe license until they confirmed Larry Hama would be contributing to their comics - and ultimately would be writing a revival of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, picking up where his original Marvel series left off. Why read what would be (at best) an imitation of Larry Hama when you could have the real thing?

Hama's revived G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero ran 2010-2012, basically as long as the original 1992-1994 Marvel books. Hama was granted more freedom as he wasn't under obligation to use new toys in his stories (although there were some new characters created during the run). He wrote the series in the same fashion he says he's always written - turning out pages to make his deadlines, never planning in advance what the next issue would be about.

I admire Hama's seat-of-the-pants approach despite the hiccups it created. Sometimes he'd introduce subplots then forget to continue them into the next issue, then forget them altogether. On the plus side, it meant you weren't quite sure what to expect; when he decided to kill off the most popular Joe, Snake Eyes, in the 3-part story "the Death of Snake Eyes," he wound up killing him in part 2! "Part 3" turned out to be an epilogue.

The 2010-2022 run of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero certainly changed how I feel about Hama's work on the franchise; I'd always heard he wasn't a big fan of the over-the-top sci-fi elements that Hasbro had forced him to include in the past series. But in the new run he constantly worked in sci-fi stuff; his Brainwave Scanner had a near-constant presence in the series as Snake-Eyes' time in the scanner way back in the 1st series was an extremely important bit of continuity throughout the run. He brought back Serpentor - twice - and used other clones. He introduced the cybernetic Blue Ninjas who were a permanent villain group throughout the series despite being hopelessly ineffectual. It turned out that Hama really enjoyed mixing sci-fi with the military, but I felt he did his best work when the emphasis lay on the military side.

I stuck with this series from the first issue to the last even when I felt the series had lost its focus. I stuck it out because every time I started to think, "maybe it's time to stop," Hama would pen something really impressive. His best issue was probably #228; while putting that issue together, Hama realized all the main players were female characters, then decided to eliminate the usual male cast members and use only female characters for one issue. It was an interesting experiment and one that spoke to how much Hama had done to increase the female cast (when the toys were first made, Scarlett was the only female figure; Hama immediately created the Baroness to give Cobra its own female character).

There were also a number of great stand-alone stories (a real rarity in today's comics landscape) such as the "Special Missions" from issue #251-255 and "Untold Tales" that ran from #276-280. I think my favourite of those was #279, which focused on some of the Joe pilots having to use their wits to survive a superior Cobra combat wing.

Hama said in the past that Duke was one of his least favourite Joes, so I was surprised at how much he gave Duke to do in the series - Duke appeared much more frequently than Hawk, who was Hama's preferred leader. Perhaps Hama wanted to overcome what he saw as issues with the character - he felt Duke never quite jelled as the team's sergeant. Duke received more character development than most Joes as Hama made Duke's wife a significant supporting character in the book.

Of course, Hama loves humour as much as military shoptalk and many familiar jokes appeared throughout the series. No one on the Joes' team can ever remember Ghostrider's codename. "Granny Demon" always has a fresh brick in her purse. Dr. Mindbender is really a dentist. And what does the Fort Wadsworth Chaplain's Motor Pool need with all those heavily-armed vehicles, anyway?

Hama put a lot of emphasis on Snake Eyes, as expected; I saw some fans were a little tired of Snake Eyes' overexposure. Perhaps that's why Hama killed him off. He immediately made Sean Collins into the new Snake Eyes but even though Sean was a fan-favourite character, fandom didn't seem to warm up to the character. Then, he introduced Dawn Moreno as a 2nd Snake Eyes and *that* went over quite well. Dawn is probably his biggest contribution to the franchise in the 12-year run and of all the new faces he added, hers is the one most likely to keep turning up.

I would like to sum up how I feel about Hama's lengthy work on this franchise and elaborate more on what I felt the book's strengths and weaknesses were, but Hama didn't wrap up the series on #300, he fittingly ended the series on the seat of his pants, concluding with a cliffhanger. Thus my review ends here.