Halloween Week, Day 7: "The Thing on the Fourble Board"

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

When I first heard the Quiet, Please episode "The Thing on the Fourble Board" I was doubly amazed; amazed that after so many years of listening to OTR there could still be a series I had never even heard of - and that the episode could be so good -- so scary!

I think most people who discover Wyllis Cooper's Quiet, Please enter via "The Thing on the Fourble Board." It's easily the best-known episode and that's probably why I haven't discussed it on this blog until now.

Ernest Chappell portrays "Porky," a roughneck working on an oil drill site in Wyoming. One night, Porky and his friend Billy discover something very odd among a recent drilling - a petrified finger. When the mud is removed from the finger, it vanishes from sight. And then the real terror begins.

"The Thing on the Fourble Board" aired on Quiet, Please on August 9, 1948. You can hear this episode at the Quiet Please website.

Halloween Week, Day 6: "Sorry, Wrong Number"

The old-time radio hobby is vast and, most happily, filled with thousands of surviving programs. Yet I think there are three particular shows you can guarantee a hobbyist will hear eventually, no matter what their inclinations are; there's the Mercury Theater on the Air version of "War of the Worlds"; there's the live news broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster; and there's the Suspense episode "Sorry, Wrong Number."

Suspense was still a young program on its first year when they presented Agnes Moorehead as the star of the first production of Lucille Fletcher's "Sorry, Wrong Number." It went on to be presented a total of 10 times on Suspense; Fletcher adapted her script into a stage play and Hollywood made it into a motion picture starring Barbara Stanwyck in 1948 and a 1989 TV movie with Loni Anderson.

Yet familiarity so often breeds contempt; when OTR fans bring up "War of the Worlds" they might have differing opinions of the program but most of them like it. I have seldom, however, heard an OTR fan champion "Sorry, Wrong Number." I think the commonly-held view is that it's good, but not the greatest episode of Suspense. Heck, it wasn't even the greatest script Lucille Fletcher wrote for Suspense (they adapted her terrific story "The Hitchhiker" in their first year too)!

And that's a shame because if you've never heard "Sorry, Wrong Number," you're in for a treat. It's instantly memorable and a true representation of the kind of drama radio could do so well. Moorehead portrays one Mrs. Stevens, a lonely bed-ridden woman whose only link to the world outside is her telephone. One day she accidentally overhears a conversation in which two men are planning a murder and determines she must do something about it.

Consider how great a debt Suspense owes to the Columbia Workshop, where producer-director William Spier helped make his reputation, Lucille Fletcher produced many of her earliest scripts and talents were given the freedom to pursue unusual ideas for dramatic radio. If "Sorry, Wrong Number" had been aired on Columbia Workshop it would probably be remembered as one of the series' better entries and as good an example as there is of what radio can achieve; instead, it's unfavorably compared to the best of Suspense and found to fall short of the crown. So who needs a crown? It's a great episode in it's own right; never grade OTR on a curve.

"Sorry, Wrong Number" first aired on Suspense on May 25, 1943; one of the actors jumped his cue at the very end of the broadcast, so it was done again on August 21, 1943 not only because it was immediately well-received but so they could render a more satisfactory production. You can download the first version from the Internet Archive here and if you prefer to hear it without the cue jump, the 2nd one is here.

Tomorrow for Halloween: "We found something once - me and Billy Gruenwald - and... something found us. I'll tell you about it."

Halloween Week, Day 5: "Behind the Locked Door"

"Behind the Locked Door" is one of the best-known old-time radio horror episodes among fandom, yet I've never featured it in any of my previous Halloween blog posts. Let's repair that now! It was an episode of the Mysterious Traveler written by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan, who wrote most of the episodes of the series.

In "Behind the Locked Door," Cathy Evans confronts her boyfriend Martin, an archaeologist who just returned from an expedition but gone into hiding. Disheveled, Martin tells Cathy what he and his professor found on their expedition - an underground civilization of humans who adapted to life without sunlight and the hideous result of their changes. This episode is famous primarily for how it ends - when the titular locked door is opened!

"Behind the Locked Door" was originally aired on the Mysterious Traveler on May 24, 1949 but the surviving version we have was aired November 6, 1951. You can download this episode from the Internet Archive here.

Tomorrow: "Don't worry. Everything's okay."

Halloween Week, Day 4: "Dead Man's Holiday"

A man narrowly survives an accident aboard a train. Awakening from the crash, he soon finds the whole world seems to be involved in a conspiracy against him; his wife is missing; his name and his face have been changed; he seems to be a wanted criminal. Such is the premise of "Dead Man's Holiday."

It's such a good premise that Inner Sanctum Mysteries told this story twice. Four years after "Dead Man's Holiday," someone had the idea of recycling the script but altering the protagonist from a man to a woman. There were a few other changes made to the plot, but for the most part the result, "The Unburied Dead," is the same story, just gender-swapped.

"Dead Man's Holiday" aired on Inner Sanctum Mysteries on June 19, 1945. You can download it from the Internet Archive here. "The Unburied Dead" aired May 16, 1949. You can download it from the Internet Archive here.

Tomorrow: "A noise came from its throat that was more that of an animal than a human being."

Halloween Week, Day 3: "Murder from the Grave"

The Shadow, of course, featured a hero with the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds so that they could not see him; although that's a pretty fantastic ability, most episodes of the Shadow pit the hero against normal men. Sometimes they were extremely dangerous men, men who were arsonists, poisoners or submarine commanders. But there are only a few episodes where the Shadow is pit against an enemy who is, like himself, something paranormal.

An exception is "Murder from the Grave." In this episode, a doctor at a morgue gets the bright idea (in retrospect, very poorly-thought out idea) of resurrecting a dead mobster with his secret formula. Before long, the mobster has control of the formula and is using it to raise recently-killed criminals from the grave, building an army of dead men to go on a crime spree!

This episode is from the era of the Shadow where the hero was portrayed by the excellent Bill Johnstone, with Marjorie Anderson as his faithful companion Margo Lane.

"Murder from the Grave" aired on the Shadow on April 6, 1941. You can hear this episode on YouTube.

Tomorrow: "Somebody's done a perfect job of framing me. Either that -- or I'm a murderer."

Halloween Week, Day 2: "Perigi's Wonderful Dolls"

The Dimension X episode "Perigi's Wonderful Dolls" feels like a long-lost Ray Bradbury story - a story in which children are kind of terrible but also a bit slow to realize when something horrible is trying to pit them against their parents.

The story was written by George Lefferts as an original tale for Dimension X. It concerns the toymaker Perigi, who is all to eager to give one of his toy dolls to a little girl out shopping with her mother - particularly because the girl's father is an official in the Pentagon. The girl's doll, Toto, is quite a chatterbox, always talking... including some disturbing speech about dolls ruling over humanity.

"Perigi's Wonderful Dolls" aired on Dimension X on August 4, 1950. You can download the episode from the Internet Archive here.

Tomorrow: "We ain't very pretty, are we? Well, nobody is - once they've been dead!"

Halloween Week, Day 1: "Dead Man"

I have an annual tradition on this blog of revisiting some scary old-time radio shows around Halloween, and I try to keep from spotlighting shows that have appeared on the blog in previous years. This year I'm going to look at 7 programs in the week leading up to Halloween.

We begin with the drama "Dead Man" starring Humphrey Bogart, which was created as a pilot for a radio series that was never picked up. It's not technically a horror program, but it has a unearthly vibe; it concerns a drifter named Lucky who accidentally causes the death of a railroad detective. Thereafter, Lucky is "haunted" by the dead man - or, rather, his conscience causes him to imagine the dead man's voice in his mind.

"Dead Man" was a 1936 short story written by James M. Cain. Bogart had already had some success with Cain on the radio - he starred in an adaptation of Cain's novel Love's Lovely Counterfeit on Suspense. Post-war, Cain's books were becoming hot properties as successful movies such as the Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce had already been in cinemas prior to Bogart's version of "Dead Man."

Although this very impressive pilot did not result in a series, two years later Bogart would launch his own syndicated radio adventure series - Bold Venture - which he starred in with his wife, Lauren Bacall.

"Dead Man" was recorded as an audition program on September 17, 1949. You can download it from the Internet Archive here.

Tomorrow: "By the time they arrive my people will have prepared something quite shocking!"

Radio Recap: Shorty Bell

Shorty Bell was a short-lived but somewhat fascinating radio program. It aired as a sustained program on CBS March 28 to June 27, 1948. It starred Mickey Rooney and was overseen by director William N. Robson (who left the series Escape to helm this program). It was a newspaper drama created by two journalists - Frederick Hazlitt Brennan and Richard Carroll - and was introduced as a "novel for radio."

The series was meant to be something of a prime-time soap opera drama, following the ongoing trials of Shorty Bell (Rooney), a short newspaper truck driver whose great ambition is to become a journalist. By the end of the debut episode, Shorty gets his first chance to prove himself to the publisher. Presumably the intent was to follow Shorty as he rose the ranks at the newspaper and proved himself as a writer. Certainly journalism is a great source for adventure and drama on radio.

Now, unfortunately, we only have four episodes of Shorty Bell and I don't quite what happened between the first episode and the next surviving episode (dated June 13, 3 months after the debut) but clearly the show was being retooled. Although Robson remained the director (he's even heard as himself on the June 13 episode), Brennan and Carroll were gone, replaced with writer Walter Newman (who also wrote for Robson on Escape). The tone of the June 13 episode is entirely different; Shorty Bell is now a sitcom with a studio audience!

The sitcom version of Shorty Bell follows the same character and situation introduced months earlier, but now it's played for laughs. Rooney is now accompanied by familiar sitcom voices like Alan Reed and Dink Trout (both veterans of CBS' Life of Riley) and the studio audience sound as though they were imported from a broadcast of Archie; they were clearly young and very loud and laughed especially loud when someone flubbed a line of dialogue.

The next surviving episodes are from June 20 and 27 and the tone has shifted back to drama (although a studio audience can be heard on the 27th). Whereas the June 13 episode departed from the series' premise for a typical sitcom plot about Shorty's novel being picked up for a dog hero movie, the other episodes are back to following Shorty's gradual ascent at the ranks at the newspaper. But clearly the series wasn't working because the episode of the 27th was the final broadcast. Rooney hung around to host a new program, Hollywood Showcase (a talent scout program) and Robson went back to Escape.

Shorty Bell had a very promising start; what went wrong? Rooney was a popular star, although by 1948 he was trying to change his image. Maybe audiences didn't respond to him in a dramatic role, so they tried to win them over with more comedy. I think if the series had stuck to its guns and kept to the original idea of a "radio novel" it still would have flopped, but the remaining fragments would be more valuable.

You can hear the four remaining episodes of Shorty Bell at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Group Library.

Radio Recap: Rocky Jordan

Rocky Jordan started out as a CBS adventure serial called A Man Named Jordan, which ran from 1945-1947. Then in 1948 it returned as a half-hour weekly program that lasted until 1950. It came back as a summer show in 1951, then went away for good. Originally Rocky Jordan was set in Istanbul but in the half-hour program he moved to Cairo and owned the Cafe Tambourine. In both versions, Rocky owned a nightclub and would inevitably encounter criminals and have to get himself out of trouble.

Jack Moyles played Rocky Jordan for almost all of the series, until George Raft took over the part for the show's final season (Raft's Hollywood career was basically over when he stumbled into the role). Jay Novello portrayed Sam Sabayya of the Cairo police, Rocky's best frenemy. While Sabayya was an amiable and helpful police official (though frequently he would issue very earnest warnings to Rocky about the episode's trouble), Sabayya's lieutenant Greco (Lou Krugman) was a vicious thug who was all-too-willing to find crimes he could pin on Rocky.

After a few months without a sponsor the show picked up Del Monte food from summer 1949 til summer 1950; advertisements would address the lady of the house, suggesting that a number of women made up the show's listening audience despite the hard-boiled nature of the program. Don't make assumptions about what appeals to different genders, I guess!

The cast benefited from the usual stock of CBS players; Paul Frees turned up frequently, usually in multiple roles per episode. It was lacking in actual Egyptian voices but the series made some allowances for that as Rocky would usually wind up embroiled in some trouble created by a tourist - as his bar was frequented by expats, not by Muslims.

Most of the programs are from the Jack Moyles years and they're very good adventure yarns that sound a lot like the ones CBS was producing simultaneously for Escape (it helped that writers like William Froug and John Dunkel wrote for both shows). One particularly fun episode is "Portrait of Rocky" (April 3, 1949) in which Rocky meets an Egyptian private eye who idolizes radio detectives such as Sam Spade - it includes some funny shout-outs to the Adventures of Sam Spade and even plays the show's theme as the story fades out!

When George Raft took over the series for the summer of 1951, there was quite a shift. Jay Novello and Lou Krugman continued in their respective supporting roles, but the bartender character Chris - previously a very minor person - was suddenly elevated to narrator of the series and portrayed by Lawrence Dobkin. In the Jack Moyles years, Moyles narrated the series from first-person perspective; it feels considerably less visceral and fast-paced when all of Rocky's actions are narrated after-the-fact by Chris, who wasn't even present at the time of the events he would narrate. As the series was announced as being "partially transcribed," I wonder if Raft did all of his recording on transcription with Dobkin and other performers being added later? At any rate, Raft's performance is lackluster and wholly inferior to that of Moyles.

Cliff Howell produced and directed the program from start to finish; his other radio credits included directing episodes of Jeff Regan, Investigator, the Adventures of Philip Marlowe, Broadway Is My Beat and - improbably - Amos 'N' Andy.

You can listen to Rocky Jordan at the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: Romance

For much of the Golden Age of radio, CBS had three dramatic anthology programs whose single-word titles summed up what the audience could expect from the program. There was, of course, Suspense; then there was Escape. But how much attention have you paid to Romance?

Somehow, despite a healthy run on radio (1943-1957) and a large archive of episodes, Romance is a series I've seldom seen revisited by old-time radio fans. I first learned of the program's existence in John Dunning's On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio and his entry for Romance was pretty sparse and dismissive. He presented the data surrounding the program's timeslots and production credits but he didn't offer even one paragraph of commentary about the series itself.

Like all anthology programs, Romance was indeed a mixed bag, but the sheer scope of years and formats under which CBS presented Romance demonstrate that it's a program well worth seeking out. At times it was a sponsored program with big-name Hollywood stars; at times it adapted famous Hollywood movies (especially 1944-1946 when called Theater of Romance); sometimes it told romantic stories; other times it was "romantic" in a classical sense. In all its eras, it benefited from CBS' strong production values. And small wonder! The 1944-1946 programs (Theater of Romance) were produced by Charles Vanda of Suspense; the 1950-1953 programs were produced and written by Norman Macdonnell and John Meston just prior to their joint creation of Gunsmoke; and Suspense's Antony Ellis and William N. Robson oversaw the final years of the program, abetted by familiar names from Suspense and Escape like writers Kathleen Hite and E. Jack Neuman. Some scripts were even recycled from Escape, including "Wild Oranges," "Loup-Garou" and "the Cave."

During the period where it was called Theater of Romance it sounds like the same orchestra that performed on Suspense! Great radio performers like William Conrad, John Dehner, Harry Bartell, Georgia Ellis, Hans Conreid, Paula Winslowe and Lawrence Dobkin were heard on Romance through most of its history and the Theater of Romance included big name stars like Humphrey Bogart, Joseph Cotten, Cary Grant, Edward G. Robinson, James Stewart, Ray Milland, Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall.

The Theater of Romance era of the show is very interesting, although the movie adaptations are a bit odd - because the program's premise was that it was a romantic program, they would often strip the movie plots down to simply the romantic passages. The adaptation of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," for example, is concerned more so with the titular Mr. Chips' relationship with his wife than his career as a schoolmaster.

Still, there are some especially fine programs during the Theater of Romance period. Be sure to check out Bogart in the murder story "Conflict" (September 11, 1945). From the rest of the series I recommend most strongly "Pagosa" (August 6, 1951), a western tale with William Conrad, Georgia Ellis, writer John Meston and producer Norman Macdonnell together prior to Gunsmoke; the sci-fi farce "the Strip Teaser and the Space Warp" (March 24, 1956); and the humorous "the Lady and the Tiger" (May 12, 1956).

You can hear the Old-Time Radio Researchers Group's collection of Romance episodes at the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: Night Beat

Night Beat was an NBC program that starred Frank Lovejoy as Randy Stone, a newspaper reporter who "covered the night beat." Each program would find Randy investigating a human interest story or stumbling into one during the course of events. It aired 1950-1952 and was sponsored for part of its run by Wheaties, part of it by Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. Night Beat enjoyed a higher budget than other NBC dramatic programs so, for a change, I'm not here to register my usual complaints about NBC's repetitive musical choices. Night Beat had unique musical bridges, a large cast of characters (including familiar voices like William Conrad, Jeff Chandler and Howard McNear) and very good sound effects.

The pilot episode of Night Beat from 1949 is available and it's quite different from what the show became. It's not just that in the pilot Randy was called "Hank Mitchell" and was played by Edmond O'Brien, who went on to star in Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar instead (Frank Lovejoy used the same script for the 2nd pilot). In the pilot, "Hank" is outraged when a reformed criminal he knew is killed and is convinced his friend's old mob ties are responsible. "Hank" takes up a gun and goes seeking revenge; it's very noir, but -- outside of Randy's very noirish narration -- that wasn't the feel Night Beat ultimately went for.

Night Beat was a very humanist program. Randy Stone didn't solve problems with a gun or even his fists - like, ever. Typically, Randy would calm a person down by appealing to their character and what he learned about them across the drama. Indeed, Randy was a long-suffering protagonist whose goodness was often tread upon by the subject of that week's episode. In one episode, Randy was mugged by an old man who needed money for gambling. Randy then went looking for the old man to help him break his gambling habit and in the course of this he was repeatedly beaten up by bouncers at casinos. Randy seldom gets to prove his masculinity by shoving back, he's more likely to be the one who is shoved. In the era of noir-ish tough guys, this makes Night Beat's Randy Stone all the more unusual.

Towards the end, I wonder if Night Beat's budget was running out? One of the later episodes, "The Bomb On Flight 63," (September 4, 1952) uses a script recycled from NBC's the Silent Men that had been aired earlier that same year!

If you like a strong drama with a bit of action and mystery but think all the radio private eyes sound alike, you might do well to check out Night Beat for something a little offbeat. My favourite episodes include "The Man Who Claimed to Be Dead" (March 13, 1950) in which a man keeps insisting to Randy that he's dead and has men ready to vouch for it; "A City at Your Fingertips" (July 31, 1950) in which Randy dials a number at random and is answered by a woman being terrorized by her husband; "The Slasher" (November 10, 1950) in which Randy thinks he might have stumbled upon the identity of a man who disfigures his female victims; "Sanctuary" (June 22, 1951) in which Randy observes the showdown between the police and a man in a church tower; and "Somebody Stop Ann" (August 7, 1952) in which one of Randy's co-workers believes her children are in danger from her husband.

The majority of Night Beat is still in circulation and easy to find on old-time radio channels and websites. You can hear Night Beat on the Internet Archive.

Reflections on Angola in the New Issue of Artlife Magazine!

My wife recently published a new isuse of her Artlife Magazine and it includes a bit about our recent month-long visit to Angola with her impressions on art in Angola.

Artlife Magazine is available for free in digital format at her website, Bethany Illustrates. You can download a copy here.

Radio Recap: The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe

Rex Stout's detective character Nero Wolfe was heard a few times on the radio, the best-represented version being the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe from 1950-1951, which aired on NBC and starred Sydney Greenstreet. But there were a few other attempts to bring the character to radio prior to Greenstreet.

The first was on the Blue network from 1943-1944 as the Adventures of Nero Wolfe, a summer program run by Himan Brown of Inner Sanctum Mysteries. We have only one example remaining of that version: "The Last Laugh Murder Case" with Santos Ortega as Nero Wolfe and John Gibson as Wolfe's sidekick Archie Goodwin. The series went to Mutual in 1945 as the Amazing Nero Wolfe with star Francis X. Bushman as Wolfe and Elliott Lewis as Goodwin; the only surviving episode from that era is "The Shakespeare Folio."

That brings us to the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe and Sydney Greenstreet. Greenstreet was just terrific in the role - cantankerous, obstinante and, of course, always a step ahead of the other characters in the drama. I haven't read any of the Rex Stout stories but I do understand Wolfe didn't normally leave his home, instead using Archie Goodwin to perform the investigations while he would solve the case by expending as little effort as possible. In the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe, he did sometimes leave his home and encounter a case in the wild, much in the melodramatic means of other radio shows (such as the time Wolfe is invited to dinner and the host is murdered). But for the most part, Wolfe remained housebound, reluctant to take on a case and always haranguing Archie for arriving at conclusions too hastily. Goodwin, while performing the legwork (and often getting hit over the head, just like other radio private eyes) would also attempt to romance any woman who crossed his path, despite the alarming frequency at which they would end up dead or arrested. Rarely did Goodwin get the girl - more commonly he would be chided and mocked by Wolfe for his skirt-chasing.

For some reason, the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe seemed unable to lock down the part of Archie Goodwin, which is a shame. Still, they managed to cast three terrific actors in the part - Lawrence Dobkin, Harry Bartell and Gerald Mohr. Dobkin is my favourite Archie as he delivered his rejoinders to Wolfe with a delightful amount of sarcasm. Bartell was very good in the part as well, his voice falling somewhere between savvy and naive. I find Mohr a bit miscast, mainly because Mohr was already a leading man - indeed, he was still appearing on CBS' the Adventures of Philip Marlowe at the same time he was heard on the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe - and it's distracting to hear him demoted to sidekick on a different detective program. Mohr was a terrific radio actor but I think his distinctive voice is too distracting in this instance.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a collection of the New Adventures of Nero Wolfe on the Internet Archive.

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.

Lubango Vlog: Reflections

As we leave Angola, my wife and I reflect on our activities and accomplishments of the previous month.

How Not to Hunt Lions

While in Angola I recorded my Uncle Steve delivering his famous "How Not to Hunt a Lion" story. Now you can see it for yourself!

Lubango Vlog: More Junk Food Testing!

My wife and I made another junk food testing video for your enjoyment!

Radio Recap: The Silent Men

The Silent Men was an NBC program that aired for one season from October 14, 1951 to May 28, 1952. The program was hosted and starred Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Although it was an anthology program, each week Fairbanks portrayed a different character. At least, so he'd claim; all of Fairbanks' protagonists sounded alike, they just had different names and held slightly different jobs. Every episode was about the adventures of a federal agent, all allegedly based on true stories. The series drew on a lot of familiar radio performers, with William Conrad or Paul Frees sometimes appearing as Fairbanks' boss (Conrad would also double as other characters in the same episode).

The Silent Men feels representative of many other law enforcement programs of the early 1950s - programs that were inspired by Dragnet but didn't want to cover the same ground. The Silent Men is especially similar to shows like the FBI in Peace and War and This Is Your FBI, although it featured characters in government services outside of the FBI, such as treasury agents and even the mail!

What holds back the Silent Men is that it's yet another 1950s NBC dramatic show; NBC relied far too much on stock music for all their dramatic shows that resulted in nearly all of them sounding alike (Dimension X and X Minus One were happy contrasts). The music cues are particularly clumsy - they don't punctuate a significant line of dialogue or signal a scene transition - they all have the same weight so therefore nothing is given weight by the music. There aren't that many sound effects employed and although the casts are talented, they're small. Most of the heavy lifting is on Fairbanks as the narrator and star, so if you don't enjoy hearing him talk for 25 minutes, this really isn't a program for you. I found it all right, but it isn't a program to "binge" - simply listen to an episode just now and then.

There are episodes written by some great talent like John and Gwen Bagni but even then... the Bagnis' episode "Blood Money" recycles parts of the script they wrote for the Escape episode "Border Town," suggesting they didn't feel like putting in an effort for the Silent Men.

You can hear the surviving episodes of the Silent Men on the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Radio Recap: Murder at Midnight

Murder at Midnight was a syndicated mystery anthology program heard from September 16, 1946 until September 8, 1947. It was directed by Anton M. Leader, shortly before he became the director of Suspense and just after working on Words at War.

The program's announcer was Raymond Morgan, who had the unusual background of being a minister who went into show business. He rumbled out the program's title at various points through each episode: "Murderrr! Aaat... Miiidniiight!" In fact, the scripts would often take pains to set events around midnight so that when the announcer interrupted the drama he could remind listeners how near they were to midnight (and whether a murder had happened or was about to happen).

Amazingly, much of the series was recycled from existing scripts. A lot of episodes were reused from Inner Sanctum Mysteries, particularly scripts by Robert Newman and Sigmund Miller. Some of these episodes no longer exist in their Inner Sanctum version, so the Murder at Midnight copies at least give us a performance of the work. Others exist in both forms, such as "Death Across the Board" and "the Dark Chamber."

There's also an episode of Suspense that was recycled on Murder at Midnight - "A Week Ago Wednesday - but the Murder at Midnight version appears to be lost. Most surprising is that many episodes were recycled from the Shadow, meaning they had to edit the character of the Shadow out of the script! You can observe this for yourself if you listen to the Murder at Midnight episode "Trigger Man" and compare it to the Shadow episode "Death Keeps a Deadline."

I've blogged about one episode of Murder at Midnight before -- that would be "the Creeper", the drama of a murderer targeting women. It was first produced on Molle Mystery Theater. Interestingly, some Murder at Midnight episodes were later adapted on Molle Mystery Theater - the episode "Nightmare" became "I Dreamt I Died" (it was also adapted for Murder by Experts).

But amidst all these adaptations there were a number of original scripts. A good chilling episode is "Terror Out of Space" about an extraterrestrial consciousness that possesses a scientist. Or there's "the Heavy Death" about a man who's made himself extremely dense. And there's an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Suicide Club" called "The Ace of Death" that makes a few changes to the story but works pretty well.

I feel Murder at Midnight is of interest primarily to people who like the other shows I've mentioned. If Inner Sanctum Mysteries, the Shadow, Suspense and Molle Mystery Theater are your cup of tea, then you ought to give this series a chance. The program's one great shortcoming is that every episode opens with a brief preview of the upcoming drama, sometimes giving away part of the story's climax! It's a very bad idea and ruins some of the suspense.

You can hear Murder at Midnight using this YouTube playlist created by the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Group.

Radio Recap: Police Reporter

Police Reporter was a 15-minute syndicated program that appears to date back to 1933. It featured dramatizations of what were all apparently true-life crime cases.

There are plenty of other programs about true-life cases, but what sets Police Reporter apart is that the cases were frequently gruesome. There are some infamous true crime stories like that of the "Vampire of Dusseldorf and Burke and Hare and they retain a lot of details that later programs such as the Black Museum would never speak of. Easily the biggest departure from what you're used to in radio violence is the episode "A Gruesome Murder," which is exactly what it says on the tin.

The 15-minute running time keeps every episode of Police Reporter very brisk and easy to listen to, even when the crimes themselves are quite awful. There's little time devoted to thinking and pondering the clues to solving a crime, instead every scene is driven by incident and the dialogue is snapped out by the actors with urgency. If you're a fan of Rick Geary's Treasury of XXth Century Murder graphic novel series, you'll probably really like this radio program.

You can hear the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Group collection of Police Reporter on the Internet Archive.

Lubango Vlog: Mural Painting, Days 6-8

Here are 3 days' worth of my wife and I making progress in the CEML mural repair!

Proof: On TV?

My friends Riley Rossmo and Alex Grecian have recently had their comic book series Proof optioned as a television series! This isn't the first time they've had a TV option picked up but this one sounds more certain to pan out. I'm very happy for my friends! I myself contributed a few character profiles of Proof cast members to their last story, "Endangered." If this means my old profiles will get reprinted with their stories, so much the better!

Lubango Vlog: Canadians Test Coffee in Angola!

We don't only eat junk food in Angola - we also like our coffee! in this video, my wife and I sample coffee from the local stores!

Lubango Vlog: Ministry Updates

Updates on the work my wife and I are doing in Angola, including English lessons, art classes and mural repair!

Lubango Vlog: Canadians Try Junk Food in Angola

My junk food videos about Angola are one of the quirky ideas I had to get friends interested in what I was doing in Angola. Now that I'm in Angola with my wife, there are two of us with opinions to share!

Radio Recap: The Blue Beetle

Leaping down upon the underworld to smash gangland, comes the friend of the unfortunate, enemy of criminals, a mysterious all-powerful character. A problem to the police, but a crusader for law; in reality Dan Garrett, a rookie patrolman. Loved by everyone, but suspected by none of being, the Blue Beetle! As the Blue Beetle, he hides behind a strange mask and a suit of impenetrable blue chain armor, flexible as silk but stronger than steel!"

The Blue Beetle was a 15-minute twice-a-week serial that aired on CBS from May 15, 1940 until September 13, 1940. It was adapted from Fox's Blue Beetle comic books. The comic book super hero, of course, was much later revived and reworked by Charlton comics in the 1960s and revamped by Steve Ditko into a beloved super hero; the Charlton version was eventually bought by DC Comics.

But this program was years before Ditko; Fox were trying to promote their comic book hero (they couldn't have been blind to the success of DC's Superman) and had branched him out into a comic strip. It seems as though the Blue Beetle comic book was more a product of committee than anyone's passion project; Fox didn't credit many of their creators. The Blue Beetle might have been created by Will Eisner and Charles Nicholas, but that's not entirely certain. He debuted in the first issue of 1939's Mystery Men Comics but didn't even land the cover spot until the 7th issue, which shipped just months before the radio show started. I'm baffled as to why Fox decided the Blue Beetle should be their marquee property - it feels very random.

Well, not too random. In his 1st appearance the Blue Beetle was rip-off of the Green Hornet. He wore a suit with hat and mask; he drove around in a fancy car; he pretended to be a criminal; there was an over-confident comedy relief Irishman who wanted to unmask him (Mike Mannigan, a Mike Axford rip-off). Heck, what is the Blue Beetle but just another color-themed insect codename? I feel Fox wanted to ride the coattails of an existing popular radio hero franchise.

The radio version gives the Blue Beetle something he lacked in the comics - a proper origin. The first issue of Blue Beetle's own series came out just ahead of the radio show and featured his origin but although it went into great detail as to hero Dan Garrett's upbringing and police training it never actually explained why he wore a costume and made his hangout a local pharmacy (his costume wasn't said to be bulletproof until Mystery Men Comics #10). The radio version does this in the first two-parter as Dr. Franz saves the life of dying policeman Dan Garrett by giving him the 2X super vitamin. Mystery Men Comics #13 came out the same month as the radio series launched and had a hastily-pasted caption in the first panel that claimed the comics hero also used this vitamin. It certainly wasn't the most elegant cross-media adaptation.

Speaking of cross-media, just as the Adventures of Superman radio program was the place where Kryptonite, Perry White and Jimmy Olsen first appeared, Blue Beetle contained the debut of Joan Mason, a lady reporter who went on to appear in the Blue Beetle comics and became the star of her own adventures. Of course, introducing a lady reporter character also invites comparisons to Superman...

There were other cross-media adaptations; a two-parter called "Sabotage and Liquidation" was also told in Blue Beetle #2; the two-part story "Thoroughbreds Always Come Through" about a crooked race horse scheme might be adapted from another story in Blue Beetle #2; Mystery Men Comics #7 had a story about criminals impersonating the Blue Beetle which was also the plot of "Crime Incorporated"; and a story in Mystery Men Comics #8 about mad bombers might have inspired a similar story in "Blasting the Dynamite Ring."

Another aspect from the comics that was faithfully adapted to radio is Blue Beetle's over-confidence. Usually near the end of each part 1, the Blue Beetle will confront the villains. He will then be caught unaware as one of them creeps up behind him and knocks him out. That seemed to happen in just about every Blue Beetle comic book story in 1939-1940. Unique to the radio version, however, is a repeated conversation wherein he confronts criminals who sputter, "The Blue Beetle--!?" he likes to respond, defiantly, "Yes, the Blue Beetle, and I'm going to nip you!" It's really not intimidating but the man says it with conviction.

In the comics, the Blue Beetle had a habit of suddenly revealing he was carrying objects to help him overcome his obstacles, such as revealing his belt buckle contains a lockpick. Other times a pistol would just suddenly appear in the Blue Beetle's hand in-between panels so he could execute his enemies (certainly he couldn't conceal one in his skintight costume); it's easy to fight crime when the artist helps you cheat! In the radio version his chief weapon was his "magic ray gun." Dr. Franz would frequently come up with new sci-fi inventions to help him out. I can understand a pharmacist inventing a miracle vitamin, but on the radio Dr. Franz comes up with an invisibility formula, a poison detector ring and a portable television set! Usually these were tossed off in a line of dialogue such as, "Oh, by the way Danny, you might as well test the portable television set! It may come in handy!"

Dr. Franz had a very soft, kindly voice with a hint of accent that made him sound like Geppetto. He was also incurably naive and would constantly need Dan to explain things to him very carefully, such as why people would cheat on horse races. It was clunky dialogue clearly meant for the juvenile audience but then, it was a juvenile serial. I found the dialogue on Blue Beetle much more juvenile than that of the Adventures of Superman - in fact, it was written with the same kind of dialogue you'd find in comic books of 1939-1940. I guess I'm saying once again that it's a very authentic adaptation?

In the first 10 episodes, Dan was portrayed by Frank Lovejoy, very early in his career; Lovejoy would go on to greater things but he definitely put some vigour his performance on this radio series. Unfortunately we don't know who took over the role after Lovejoy exited.

Again, this was a very juvenile program but good for it's time; it's certainly an interesting curio that, for a brief window, the Blue Beetle was being promoted as one of comicdom's big names. It probably helped him maintain recognition to audiences in the years and decades to come, long after the radio program itself was forgotten.

You can hear all 48 episodes of the Blue Beetle using this YouTube playlist created by the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Group.

Radio Recap: The Black Hood

"Criminals, beware! The Black Hood is everywhere!"
"I, the Black Hood, do solemnly swear, that neither threats, nor bribes, nor bullets, nor death itself shall keep me from fulfilling my vow: To erase crime from the face of the Earth!"

The Black Hood was a 15-minute daily serial program heard over Mutual from July 5, 1943 until January 14, 1944. It was based on the Archie Comics super hero. We have only one episode of the Black Hood that still exists. In his book On the Air, John Dunning asserted that the radio version of the Black Hood wore a mask that granted him supernatural power. If that's so, it isn't from the comics (in the comics the Black Hood had no super powers) and the mask isn't said to have any powers in the sole surviving episode.

The series starred Scott Douglas as policeman Kip Burland, alias the Black Hood. The cast also included Marjorie Cramer as newspaper reporter Barbara Sutton, Burland's lovely sidekick, who was the Black Hood's love interest in the comics as well. Kip's fellow policeman Sgt. McGinty is likewise a comics character who made the jump to radio. In the surviving episode, Kip and Barbara were investigating crimes connected to voodoo.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers' Group has a copy of the sole surviving episode, which you will find at this link (it's part of their "singles and doubles" collection).

A final radio super hero adaptation will be tomorrow's recap and it's a big one!

Radio Recap: The Green Lama

The Green Lama was a pulp magazine hero whose adventures were published from 1940-1943. He was clearly in the shadow of... well, the Shadow; like him, he was a white man (Jethro Dumont) who gained mystical powers from his time in Asia. In fact, Dumont became an actual Tibetan lama.

It's not clear to me why the Green Lama became a radio hero very briefly in 1949; his pulp adventures had ceased by then and so had his comic book stories. But somehow, the Green Lama aired over CBS from June 5 to August 20, 1949 as a summer series. It lasted just 11 episodes and we only have 4 of them now.

What makes the Green Lama interesting - beyond the super hero trappings that were atypical for prime time radio - is that the series starred Paul Frees. Frees was, of course, one of radio's finest performers. He could deliver the character's catchphrase - "Om manipadme hum! The Green Lama strikes - for justice!" with conviction.

Many familiar CBS performers can be heard on the show, notably Ben Wright as the Green Lama's servant Tulku. The episode "the Last Dinosaur" featured a great guest appearance by William Conrad as a Hollywood film producer; it's great fun to hear Conrad as a slick, fast-talking huckster. Norman MacDonnell produced the series (he would later produce Escape and Gunsmoke), so the quality is overall much higher on the Green Lama than that of most radio adventure hero programs.

You can hear the 4 surviving episodes of the Green Lama on the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Another radio super hero recap tomorrow!

Lubango Vlog Is Back!

Learn all about the work my wife and I are performing in Lubango in this new vlog!

RIP: Peter B. Gillis

Yesterday the death of my friend Peter B. Gillis was announced.

Peter B. Gillis was a comic book writer who worked primarily from 1978-1990. He might be best-remembered as the creator of Strikeforce: Morituri. He was also the writer of the Defenders for many years with artist Don Perlin, who likewise passed away just the other month.

He became one of my favourite writers after I became enthralled by the Eternals. I loved the story he began in the 12-issue Eternals mini-series he started in 1985 with Sal Buscema and it was an enormous shame that he wasn't able to finish the story, leaving after the 8th issue.

But the earliest comic of his that made an impression upon me was What If #46: "What If Spider-Man's Uncle Ben Had Lived?" He was paired there with artist Ron Frenz, who did his best to ape and even recreate moments from Steve Ditko's earliest Amazing Spider-Man stories. In Gillis' story, Uncle Ben lives and Aunt May dies; Ben quickly surmisees Peter is Spider-Man and refuses to see his nephew meekly submit as his reputation is smeared in the newspapers. Gillis imagined that Ben had a real personality and I think it was the first time any Spider-Man story attempted to give Uncle Ben some depth.

Through Facebook I became friends with him and had a few private conversations with him. I'm happy I was able to tell him how much I loved his work. I found him very humble and sensitive. I fear that as he was embroiled in legal battles with Marvel over Strikeforce: Morituri that his legacy might not loom large compared to his contemporaries. But to me, at least, he was one of the greats.

Rest in peace, Mr. Gillis.

Radio Recap: The Player

The Player was a 15-minute syndicated program from 1948. It starred Paul Frees as virtually every character in the show ("your one man theater"), just as he would in the later series Black Book. Some places online refer to the Player as "Studio X."

The series called on a lot from Frees; he tended to narrate the stories while performing as the characters. It's not the most effective way to tell a story in radio (I prefer stories without narrators) but Frees was so adept at switching between voices that it works very well. The series was also augmented by the use of guitar as the primary musical accompaniment - that gives the series a sound that's very different from other radio programs. There are also plenty of sound effects, which make this series stronger than other shows I've heard which featured just one performer.

The stories on the Player vary; some are mystery stories, other adventure, some simply dramatic, other humorous. It seems as though primarily it was about demonstrating Frees' range, spending some time in his company as he narrates/performs a story. Four of the surviving episodes feature a character called "the Professor," a very smart and soft-spoken man who uses his wits to resolve conflicts in a light-hearted and humorous manner.

I found the Player to be pretty effective; Paul Frees was certainly a treasure and he was in fine form. My favourite episode is "Fate Upsets a Plan," concerning a bank robbery that goes wrong in a very Whistler-esque manner.

You can listen to the Player at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Review: Le Horla

Guy de Maupassant's 1887 short story "The Horla" was my introduction to the author; I heard a production of the radio series Mystery in the Air with Peter Lorre in the lead role of a man being haunted by an invisible presence (here) and it made an immediate impression. Certainly the adaptation featured Lorre at the top of his range, closing with him in the midst of a ranting breakdown to beat all breakdowns.

I read a lot of Maupassant's short stories (possibly all of them, I haven't found a decent bibliography that takes into account all the variant English titles his stories have had). "The Horla" wasn't Maupassant's only supernatural tale but such themes are rare in his work. "The Horla" remains his most famous work.

The concept of an invisible presence isn't necessarily ideal for adaptation in a visual medium - perhaps why radio suited it so well - but it has been done. You might recall that in 2012 I reviewed an adaptation of "the Horla" in Ernie Colon's Inner Sanctum graphic novel. But that adaptation played pretty loose with the original work.

Perhaps Maupassant's work requires a fellow Frenchman to do it justice. Guillaume Sorel adapted the short story in a full-length 2014 graphic novel. I've looked at a few French graphic novels on the blog recently and I suppose I should reiterate - I don't read French. My Portuguese helps a little; exposure to French in my bilingual homeland helps a little; but what helped me the most in Sorel's Le Horla is that dialogue isn't what drives his adaptation of this familiar story. Most of the atmosphere and terror is visual in nature.

Sorel has a few means to make the invisible menace visible. One is by demonstrating the effects of the creature's presence upon the hapless protagonist, such as in this scene where it simply breaks a flower by the stem. It's eerie and suspenseful, taking good advantage of the Horla's unseen nature.

Sorel's second means is to simply depict the Horla; it appears as an outline of a figure when it hovers over the protagonist at night. I'm not sure how I feel about those scenes - Sorel's Horla is terrifying, but giving the creature even an outline makes it somewhat comprehensible. I feel some of the terror of the story is in the creature's unreality.

Maupassant suffered from mental illlness (namely, syphilis) and it's hard to avoid seeing that in the story of the Horla - that the protagonist's increasingly unhinged rants were coming from a place that Maupassant knew all to well. Sorel's interpretation of the protagonist is a bit more restrained and keeps the ranting to a minimum. Still, Sorel's Le Horla is the most faithful adaptation I have found of Maupassant's story and I do strongly recommend it to fans of Maupassant.