Halloween Radio Recap #3: Lights Out

"It... is... later... than... you... think...
Lights Out brings you stories of the supernatural and the supernormal, dramatizing the fantasies and the mysteries of the unknown; we tell you this frankly, so if you wish to avoid the excitement and tension of these imaginative plays, we urge you calmly, but sincerely, to turn off your radio... now."

Lights Out wasn't the first radio horror program - it had been preceded by the likes of The Witch's Tale - but it offered a new level of sophistication with an emphasis on sound effects and an isolating, first-person perspective to heighten the sense of danger around the show's cast. It originated on January 1, 1934 under the eye of Wyllis Cooper, who remained with the series up until 1936 when he moved on to Hollywood (a career move he later bitterly regretted).

Arch Oboler took over the series for the rest of its initial run in 1936-1939 and quickly made it his own; Oboler ran a 1942-1943 revival on CBS by sponsor Ironized Yeast and most of the surviving episodes of the show are from that era (many scripts from that era had been first performed during Oboler's 1936-1939 run). The show had brief summer revivals on NBC and ABC from 1945-1947, mostly featuring recreations from Cooper's 1934-1936 tenure. Much later, Oboler recirculated his shows with new introductions in the 1970s as The Devil and Mr. O; Oboler also produced a 1962 record called Drop Dead which featured recreations of old Lights Out scripts.

Scholarship on Lights Out is much better now than it was when I first got into old-time radio; many people simply called Lights Out as a show "created by Arch Oboler," ignoring Cooper entirely. There was also a lot of confusion around the series Arch Oboler's Plays, where fans circulated episodes from that series as episodes of Lights Out. Further, because scripts were recycled and recirculated so many times, figuring out when a recording originated has been an error-filled process - but, as I say, current scholarship has been fixing many decades-old errors.

We still have comparatively little of the show's history; those few examples of Wyllis Cooper's scripts (and the high quality of Cooper's work on his later show Quiet, Please) suggest there are many lost treasures in the show's earliest years. But Arch Oboler's particular talents were well-employed on Lights Out; he loved stream-of-consciousness storytelling, which was extremely effective on a horror series. Many of his dramas featured characters succumbing to delusions, repeating words ("got to get away... got to get away...") and a particular penchance for anti-fascism sentiment. While it means you pick up on Oboler's idiosyncracies quickly, when the man delivered a frightening scenario, the show delivered on chills.

Part of what set Lights Out apart from what came before - and much of what would come - was the lack of a horror host. There was no "Old Nancy" like on The Witch's Tale. The nearest the series came to such a host was Arch Oboler himself during the 1942-1943 series, in which he'd make banter with the announcer before, mid-drama and after. Of course, sometimes Oboler's remarks were there to reinforce the story's themes; I guess it's possible Oboler occasionally went over his audience's heads. Both Cooper and Oboler also enjoyed getting a bit meta, as Cooper's "Coffin in Studio B" and Oboler's "Murder in the Script Department" and "The Author and the Thing" are all examples of stories set during the production of Lights Out in which horror is visited upon the show's creative staff.

Beyond the lack of a horror host, the menace on Lights Out tended to be more subtle than on other horror shows. Often the creatures on the show didn't speak at all (such as on "Visitor from Hades"); in other instances, the point-of-view character is trapped somewhere and is driven insane while trying to escape ("Murder in the Script Department"). There were plenty of monsters on Lights Out - even the Devil himself a couple of times - but the terror tended to be psychological. In that way, Lights Out helped set the stage for television's The Twilight Zone.

I've recommended many episodes of Lights Out over the years and I can easily say, "just liten to them all." That is, if you like horror on radio, listen to them all! I most enjoyed Oboler's stories "It Happened," "Poltergeist," "Mungahra," "Come to the Bank," "Knock at the Door," "Meteor Man," "The Fast One," "Spider," "Bathysphere," "Murder Castle," "State Executioner" and "The Author and the Thing." From what we have of the Cooper era, the Boris Karloff episode "Death Robbery" is dynamite.

I've also blogged about an unusual episode of Lights Out that was re-dramatized on the Shadow in this blog post, and I blogged about the rare comic book adaptations of Lights Out in this blog post. I also had some thoughts about his story "Across the Gap" as an anti-fascism allegory in this blog post.

Lights Out had a TV show from 1949-1952 and a surprisingly large number of them are available - they're easily found on YouTube. Although the TV series had some adaptations from Cooper's radio work, there was just one adaptation of Oboler's work - Oboler hated television.

You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers Group's collection of 65 Lights Out episodes at this link.

Next Thursday: Quiet, Please!

Celebrating Jim Starlin on the Marvel Appendix!

It's Jim Starlin's birthday today and to celebrate, I wrote up a number of characters and items he co-created on the Marvel Appendix. Happy birthday, Mr. Starlin!

Barry Starr (Spider-Man character)
Laura Warmer (horror character)
Unisphere (Thanos device)
Thanos-Thralls (Thanos’ army of lackeys)
Captain Styx (Thanos-Thralls)
Sally (friend of the Cat)
Madame Renour (Nick Fury character)
Tony McKay (Fu Manchu character)
Rudolph Kriss (vampire, Dracula character)
Glagg (Rock Troll)
Anti-Gravity Chamber (Space Phantom’s device)

Halloween Radio Recap #2: The Mysterious Traveler

"This is The Mysterious Traveler, inviting you to join me on another journey into the realm of the strange and the terrifying; I hope you will enjoy the trip, that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little. So, settle back, get a good grip on your nerves, and be comfortable... if you can..."

The Mysterious Traveler was a half-hour horror/mystery anthology program that was heard over Mutual from December 5, 1943 to September 16, 1952. Maurice Tarplin was the titular Mysterious Traveler, a man who would greet the listener from his seat aboard a train, then narrate a story. There are early episodes where he took a part in the dramas, probably because Mutual didn't have a huge budget; but mostly, he kept to his role as a horror host.

The Mysterious Traveler was different from the other horror hosts in that he didn't enter cackling like Old Nancy in The Witch's Tale or the Hermit in The Hermit's Cave, nor with the puns of Raymond on Inner Sanctum Mysteries. Tarplin made the Traveler sound somewhat menacing, but he was extremely restrained next to the rest of his siblings.

When I first got on the internet, I found many OTR fans complaining about Inner Sanctum Mysteries and it's "cop-out" endings. They were referring to the lack of the supernatural on that program; Inner Sanctum Mysteries seldom committed to the supernatural. If that's what you want from a horror program, then The Mysterious Traveler would seem to be the program you really want, because there are plenty of episodes that embrace the supernatural head-on.

...I wrote "would seem to be," though, because that's not true of every episode of The Mysterious Traveler. For example, sometimes there are ghosts; in other episodes, the ghosts are fakes. But still further, not every episode of The Mysterious Traveler was a horror story - there are science fiction stories, mystery stories and crime stories. You can't always be certain what you'll get when you tune in.

The most talked-up episode of The Mysterious Traveler is "Behind the Locked Door" (November 6, 1951), in which a young man tells his fiancee about his expedition underground and the weird creatures he met there; it is indeed a very good episode. I'm also fond of (links to the Internet Archive files):

• "The Queen of the Cats" (July 2, 1944): A woman with a supernatural connection to cats haunts her lover.
• "Death Comes for Adolf Hitler" (March 24, 1945): Hitler takes an ill-advised submarine ride.
• "Death Is the Visitor" (August 18, 1946): A man tries to get rid of his mother-in-law for good.
• "If You Believe" (December 29, 1946): A scientist's experiments in protoplasm are hyped up as a menace by the media.
• "New Year's Nightmare" (January 5, 1947): After a drunken New Year's, a man discovers he lived an entire year under another alias.
• "The Woman in Black" (March 9, 1947): A reporter trails a woman in black who appears at the time of murders.
• "The Locomotive Ghost" (July 6, 1947): A killer is haunted by a ghostly train.
• "The Man the Insects Hated" (July 27, 1947): Exactly what it claims to be.
• "Murder Is My Business" (June 8, 1948): A radio writer wants to kill his producer.
• "Death Has a Cold Breath" (March 29, 1949): A talent agent plots his client's murder.
• "S.O.S." (May 2, 1950): A heist with a surprising finish.
• "Strange New World" (February 19, 1952): Giant radioactive crabs; 'nuff said?

The series was primarily written by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan. They'd previously created the horror anthology Dark Destiny for Mutual in 1942, but only 1 episode of that show has survived. They also created the Mutual syndicated show The Sealed Book in 1945, which recycled scripts from The Mysterious Traveler but had to trim a few minutes to fit the shorter timeslot; we can compare some programs that exist in both The Mysterious Traveler and The Sealed Book formats and it does show The Sealed Book to be inferior, as the material they trimmed really enhanced the The Mysterious Traveler's scripts.

Robert A. Arthur had a lengthy career in radio and later television and he was never one to let a perfectly good script lie idle. He and Kogan also created the 15-minute show The Strange Dr. Weird in 1945 with Maurice Tarplin also as the host. I've long assumed stories heard on The Strange Dr. Weird were condensed from The Mysterious Traveler scripts but I've yet to prove it; anyway, Arthur went on gamely recycling The Mysterious Traveler into the latter-day of Suspense's radio run. The duo also wrote for Murder by Experts and ABC Mystery Time.

The Mysterious Traveler had a comic book that lasted just one issue in 1948; I blogged about it here. It ran its own pulp magazine for six issues in 1951-1952. Later, Charlton published a comic that lasted from 1956-1959 and featured a lot of early work by Steve Ditko; Ditko published his own reprint of those stories in 2016, which I blogged about here. There were also two Mysterious Traveler comics by Moonstone in 2003 and 2004 that were by Trevor Von Eeden; I blogged about those too.

Despite the show's 9-year run, there are presently only 69 episodes in circulation. It's also unlikely more will turn up, given most Mutual shows vanished into the ether. For that reason, do treasure the fact we have The Sealed Book to supplement The Mysterious Traveler!

You'll find the Old Time Radio Research Group's YouTube playlist of The Mysterious Traveler below:

Next Thursday: Lights Out!

"If there ever was a downfall, then it was entirely of your own doing!" The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow review

The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow is a graphic novel by Youssef Daoudi, published in English last year by First Second. It's a biography of Welles that focuses on his years in Hollywood. Much of the framing around the story is set in the 1970s while Welles was shooting The Other Side of the Wind.

There's a fun sequence near the end where Orson's shadow comes to life - explicitly reminding Orson how he used to portray the Shadow on the radio - and has a conversation about Orson's career. Orson's shadow basically argues that Orson has no reason to complain about how his career turned out. Orson's shadow parrots many criticisms made about Welles over the decades - Daoudi uses the shadow as a means of making these external remarks appear internal.

Since this blog is often concerned with old-time radio, I have to caution fans of The Shadow that the book doesn't actually spend more than a moment on that series; "the Shadow" appears in the book's title primarily due to the conversation between Orson and his shadow. Still, there is a fun homage to the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" in which a Martian tripod knocks Orson's cigar from his mouth, enraging him.

This is certainly a book for Orson Welles fans, who benefit from having a fuller understanding of his life and the events The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow only has time to allude to. There are some very clever ideas in how Daoudi chose to tell Orson's life story, particularly the use of the quote which ends the book. The book is very critical of Welles, but we fans of Welles are also his harshest critics, so I have no hesitation in recommending this book.

Halloween Radio Recap #1: The Haunting Hour!

Every Thursday this October, I'm going to write a recap on an old-time radio horror program as we gear up for Halloween!

"No, stay where you are; Do not break the stillness of this moment; for this is a time of mystery, a time when imagination is free and moves forward swiftly, silently... This is: The Haunting Hour!

When I first bought John Dunning's book On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio in 1998, one of the first things I did was look up each of the horror programs I enjoyed so I could learn more about them. I was a bit annoyed that there was nothing in his book about The Haunting Hour; it was one of the first horror anthology programs I ever heard, but no one seemed to know anything about it; who produced, directed or starred in it? When did it air?

Thanks to the sorely-missed Digital Deli website, I finally got some answers. They identified it as an NBC syndicated program produced in Philadelphia. It was produced by Herbert Wood and featured Rosa Rio on the organ and music by Tilden Brown. Berry Kroeger was the show's narrator and it drew from familiar voices like Frank Lovejoy and Jackson Beck. According to the Deli, it ran for 52 episodes from June 8, 1945 to May 26, 1946.

In some ways the show reminds me of the Weird Circle, which was also from NBC syndication (1943-1945); I even wonder if The Haunting Hour were in some sense a continuation of that program - they featured many of the same actors. There's one episode of The Haunting Hour called "Revenge" that's inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" which reminded me of how the Weird Circle's stories were inspired by the works of Poe and others (although they usually made drastic changes to the original texts).

It's not entirely accurate for me to call The Haunting Hour a horror program because, taken as a whole, it was simply a mystery anthology. The word "haunting" invites you to think of an underlying supernatural menace to the stories, but the supernatural seldom looms that large. Some stories are simply detective tales; others are crime stories which delve more into suspense than mystery.

When The Haunting Hour was at it's best, it was pretty good; I highly recommend the episode "The Uptown Express," which concerns a woman who suddenly finds herself living five years into her future. I also recommend "Breakdown," about a woman who seems to be losing her grip on sanity.

The most interesting story to me is "Ptolemy's Grave," about a woman haunted by a mummy whose face resembles her husband. Amazingly, this is a story I knew from a 1943 comic book adaptation! I blogged about it before at this link; but when it appeared in Super-Magician Comics, it was introduced as an adaptation from Inner Sanctum Mysteries. I'm left wondering if this episode of The Haunting Hour recycled a script from Inner Sanctum Mysteries and if so, are other stories on The Haunting Hour recycled scripts?

The Old-Time Radio Researchers have 40 episodes of The Haunting Hour at this link.

Next Thursday: The Mysterious Traveler!

25 Years of the Marvel Appendix - wrap-up!

Today the Marvel Appendix wraps up it's 25-year celebration! I wound up covering nearly 400 characters for the event! As I promised at the start of September, I won't link to all of them, but there are a number I'd like to highlight...

Here are a few of the characters I profiled who had been the stars of their own (obscure) features: Arrowhead (western hero); Buzz Brand (war hero); Battleship Burke (naval hero); Billy Buckskin (frontier hero); Captain Daring (sci-fi hero); Captain Strong (Foreign Legion hero); Captain Terror (super hero); Blaze Carson (western hero); Combat Casey (war hero); Combat Kelly (war hero); Rick Davis (spy hero); Dave Dean (1930s deep sea diving hero); Sgt. Dix (war hero); the Falcon (Burgess) (super hero); Fighting Yank (war hero); Flying Flame (aviation hero); Flash Foster (football hero); Don Gorman (aviation hero); Gunsmoke Kid (western hero); Red Hawkins (western hero); Rex Hart (western hero); Jeep Jones (humorous war hero); Jungle Boy (jungle hero); Kid from Dodge City (western hero); Kid from Texas (western hero); Magar the Mystic (magician hero); Molly Manton (romance heroine); Monako (magician hero); Barney Mullen (naval hero); Cookie Novak (Combat Kelly's sidekick); Rusty (Defender's sidekick); Sailor Sweeney (naval hero); Rocky Steele (boxing hero); Sam Storm (war hero); the Thunderer (Carstairs) (super hero); Waku (jungle hero)

Here's some profiles I put in some decent research to create: ARCH-E-5912 (Planet Hulk); Blur (D.P.7); Cat People (Tigra characters); Sally Clark (Wyatt Earp cast member); Queen Esther (Bible); Joe Grogan (My Girl Pearl cab driver); Phil Kane (Yellow Claw); Komodo (Avengers: The Initiative cast); the Manatelli Brothers (tumblers and war heroes); Manchuria Mary (communist agent); Monolith (2001: A Space Odyssey); General Olga (communist agent); Powersurge (Avengers character); Raiders (Iron Man foes); Slippery Sam (My Friend Irma character); Peter Spalding (Machine Man character); Star Sphere (Galactus' vehicle); Queen Ursula (American Ace foe); Daniel J. Whittier (Semper Fi character)

And here's profiles of things I just think are neat: Captain Sin (captain of El Cazador); Cool Breeze (G.I. Joe); Dark Angel (Shang-Chi character); Deviant Raiding Craft (very cool vehicle); Preston Dudley (Mountie spoof); Johannes Fliet (Casey, Crime Photographer foe); Aloysius P. Jamesley (Christopher Priest expy); Phanto Band (Blackstone the Magician foes); Prowlers (Wakandan robots); Ricochet Mobile (very silly vehicle); Victor-101 (Halo); Philip Nelson Voigt (Ultimates character); Larry Windham (Suspense); Zero/One (Red Hulk foe)

Originally I just wanted to get in a few dozen profiles for the event; I wound up writing so many and became so deeply involved that I wound up reactivating my responsibilities as an editor for the Marvel Appendix. It feels good to be back with my old Appendix friends and no doubt I'll wind up profiling many more obscure Marvel characters in the years to come. Happy 25th anniversary, you wonderful old website!

Radio Recap: The Adventures of Jungle Jim

The Adventures of Jungle Jim was the 15-minute weekly syndicated program that replaced Flash Gordon in Hearst Syndication. It proved much more successful (under whatever terms Hearst considered successful) and ran from November 2, 1935 until July 31, 1954. Alex Raymond's Jungle Jim was the "topper" to his Flash Gordon on the Sunday comics page (meaning his adventures appeared on the top of the page above Flash Gordon; toppers were sometimes omitted in newspapers whose page size was smaller than the standard).

The role of Jungle Jim was played by a few people, with Matt Crowley apparently holding the role the longest (Gerald Mohr played Jim for a few weeks). Jim Bradley was a big game hunter, but the series seldom featured him hunting big game; instead, Jim would be hired out by governments to use his wilderness skills to investigate strange goings-on around in jungle climes, usually in Asia. Accompanying Jim was Kolu (Juano Hernandez), an Indian guide-- though he spoke in the type of speech radio usually gave to American Indians.

The initial storyline where Jim investigates the "Bat Woman" cult, which proves to be led by the criminal Shanghai Lil (Franc Hale), is a pretty darn good adventure serial. Shanghai Lil would turn out to be an undercover good guy who would renounce her criminal past and accompanied Jim on many of his adventures - a sort-of Burma to his Pat Ryan. But to complicate matters, Jim also wound up with his female sidekick Kitty St. John, who would make Lil jealous.

After Pearl Harbor, the show rapidly changed as Jim started fighting German and Japanese foes; he joined the Marines and was sent back to the States to ferret out undercover foreign agents (because when your speciality is hunting and tracking in Asia, obviously your greatest usefulness in World War II is to hang around stateside as a secret agent). By spring of 1942, the show's format was radically reinvented as, instead of the show's accustomed rhythm of lengthy adventures, it tended to feature Jim battling enemy agents and wrapping it all up within his 15 minutes; there were still some continued adventures, but typically they fell into no more than 2-part stories. My suspicion is that the radio show had stopped adapting the comic strip around this time. This version of The Adventures of Jungle Jim is an interesting change to witness, but it's inferior to what came before.

Because there are no shows from 1943 available I don't know when the series changed, but by 1944 Jim and Kolu (a new actor playing Kolu) were back in Asia, going on guerrilla missions against the Japanese in Malaya, which makes a lot more sense for their particular skills. They led an "Allied" team with members hailing from India, Australia, the Soviet Union and China, which meant the actors portraying those characters could use a variety of dialects.

After the war, the series shifted back into what it had been before; Shanghai Lil returned and joined Jim and Kolu on globe-trotting adventures that seemed to be based around Latin America.

Although the show didn't like to credit anyone (including Alex Raymond!) recognizable voices include Gale Gordon (who'd previously been Flash Gordon), Hanley Stafford and Elliot Lewis. The show's theme was taken from the William Tell Overture (a different part of the Overture than that used on the Lone Ranger). Up to 1942 the theme was played with a band, then it shifted to an organ.

Alex Raymond left Jungle Jim and Flash Gordon in 1944; the strip continued with John Mayo and Paul Norris and even spawned a series of movies starring Johnny Weissmuller, but the comic strip, movies and radio show ended in 1954; Weissmuller kept going with a TV show that only lasted 1955-1956. As I noted yesterday, Flash Gordon has transcended his humble origins and enjoys occasional revivals; Raymond's Flash Gordon is considered one of the greatest comic strips of all time. Jungle Jim, by contrast, is a historical artifact; today, it's mostly brought up when discussing Flash Gordon, not for its own merits. Flash Gordon had the last laugh.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers Library has 526 episodes of The Adventures of Jungle Jim; it's pretty much complete up into 1942, then gets a little spottier in later years. A clear sign that this series needs more love is that the OTRR Library files are badly missorted and misidentified. You can view their files at this link.

Radio Recap: Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon (also called the Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon) was a 15-minute weekly juvenile adventure serial syndicated by Hearst from April 27 to October 26, 1935. It starred Gale Gordon (of all people!) as Flash Gordon and was adapted directly from Alex Raymond's famous comic strip - although Raymond received no credit in the dramas. It was apparently produced by Himan Brown, best-known for Inner Sanctum Mysteries and The CBS Mystery Theater.

The Hearst syndicate apparently released Flash Gordon on discs with Front Page Drama on the reverse. Both were designed to get listeners to buy a Hearst publication - in this instance, the Hearst's colour funnies, the Comic Weekly.

At this point I've covered Hearst's Front Page Drama and Club Car Special and they all demonstrate a kind of literal-mindedness on their part; they didn't want Flash Gordon to simply promote the comic strip, they wanted each drama to represent that week's installment of the comic strip. But first, they had to get the radio audience caught up with the strip's goings-on.

Consequently, the first 4 episodes of Flash Gordon quickly summarize everything that had happened in the comic strip up until that point. Thus, the episodes move at a dizzying pace with intense, dramatic moments simply glanced over and given absolutely no time to land. Yes, it moves fast, but there's no time spent on characters or the environment, just one peril after another.

Once the show was all caught up, from then on it moved at a more able pace, dramatizing the events of that week's installment of the comic strip. It's pretty amazing that there was a time in comics history that a single page of comic art could spawn a 15-minute drama every week!

Although the Flash Gordon comic strip lasted up until 2003 (recently revived with new strips by Dan Schkade since 2023), something clearly went wrong behind-the-scenes of the program because it was discontinued after 6 months. Maybe there was a prejudice against science fiction, because the series shifted to a different Alex Raymond series, Jungle Jim, which was then the "topper" strip above Flash Gordon. Jungle Jim continued as a weekly adaptation of the comic strip (well past Raymond's exit) up to 1954.

The closing weeks of Flash Gordon are a delightful mess. Abruptly, Flash's love interest Dale Arden demands they quit their adventures and go back to Earth at the end of the 23rd episode. In the 24th episode, the series is suddenly called The Adventures of Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim. There is no Jungle Jim in that episode, as Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov fly back to Earth. In the 25th episode, the action shifts entirely to Jungle Jim and appears to reference events going on in the Jungle Jim comic strip at the time. Finally, in the 26th episode, Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov meet Jungle Jim; Flash and Dale get married, then depart, never to be spoken of again. The following week, Jungle Jim took over. What a bizarre transition!

Of course, time has been kinder to Flash Gordon than to Jungle Jim. The Alex Raymond years of Jungle Jim have their devotees, but the rest of his considerable media presence has been forgotten; Flash Gordon, however, not only still has his comic strip but featured in a well-remembered campy 1980 feature film; every now and then he pops up in cartoons, TV shows or comic books as well.

You can hear the entirety of Flash Gordon at the Old Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Tomorrow I'll write about Flash Gordon's successor, Jungle Jim.

Missing Episodes of the Whistler

One thing that I wish the OTR community was better at celebrating is circulating news when missing episodes of popular shows are discovered. I've been online for almost 30 years and the amount of OTR that's freely circulating today is much greater than when I used a dial-up modem to download shows; episodes that were confidently listed as "lost" have been found and circulating for many years. And whenever that happens, I think we OTR fans should get the word out to each other, because there is no single comprehensive authority on what's out there.

To that end, as a huge fan of the Whistler I was very pleased to notice at the fan page the Whistler Files that no less than 3 previously-lost episodes of the Whistler have been found and released by fans this year - "The Havana Lee," "No Questions Asked" and "The Croupier's Wife." There are links on the Files' main page to where you can find those episodes. If you, like me, want to hear every episode of the Whistler, well, happily there are a few more out there now.

Radio Recap: The Damon Runyon Theatre

The Damon Runyon Theatre was a half-hour syndicated program from 1949-1950 which adapted stories from the works of author Damon Runyon (who had died in 1946). It was produced by Mayfair, Alan Ladd's production company (although Ladd never appeared on the show). Mayfair also made Ladd's Box 13. It was directed by Richard Sanville of Box 13, Escape and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

John Brown served as the program's narrator, Broadway; Broadway wasn't the narrator in all of the Runyon stories when they were first printed, but it didn't seem to take much effort to simply have Broadway encounter the protagonist of another story then listen as they narrated their tale to him. The stories always had a humorous edge, especially while Broadway was narrating with his Runyon patter (such as the phrase "more than somewhat"). Most of the stories were about big city living and the various classes of criminals but the series also adapted Runyon's World War II stories. Some tales were simply funny, some were heartwarming, some were true hardboiled crime thrillers and a few were tearjerkers.

Other familiar voices in the terrific cast included Jack Webb, William Conrad, Hans Conreid, Gerald Mohr, Ed Begley, Willard Waterman, Frank Lovejoy, Alan Reed, Jeff Chandler, Joseph Kearns, Sara Berner and Sheldon Leonard.

I rather agree with John Dunning's view in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio: "In an era when radio emphasis was on Hollywood stars in film adaptations, The Damon Runyon Theater,/B> was like a cool breeze." This program was my introduction to Damon Runyon's writing and I certainly enjoyed delving into Runyon's fiction. Runyon is mostly remembered today for the Guys and Dolls musical that was inspired by his work but those who know his stories like them a lot; having read the short story collection of Guys and Dolls I'm immensely grateful to The Damon Runyon Theatre for exposing me to his writing.

My favourite episode is "Tobias the Terrible" but I also give high marks to "Little Miss Marker," "The Lemon Drop Kid," "For a Pal," "Butch Minds the Baby," "That Ever-Lovin' Wife of Hymie's," "Dark Dolores" and "Dream Street Rose." (Note that one story they didn't adapt to The Damon Runyon Theatre is "Three Wise Guys," which was instead adapted on the Whistler, complete with John Brown!).

You can hear the Old-Time Radio Researchers' collection of all 52 episodes of The Damon Runyon Theatre at this link on the Internet Archive.

New Video: The Angola Mural Projects

Here's a video of my wife and I introducing the murals we created in Angola:

Radio Recap: Our Miss Brooks

Our Miss Brooks was an extremely successful old-time radio situation comedy that lasted well into the latter days of scripted radio drama, lasting on CBS from July 19, 1948 til June 30, 1957 (I strongly suspect the last season was repeat broadcasts). It started out with Palmolive Soap and Lustre Creme Shampoo as its sponsors. It was produced by Larry Berns and directed and written by Al Lewis.

The show starred Eve Arden as Connie Brooks, the English teacher at Madison High School. The show emphasized how difficult it was to make ends meet on a teacher's salary. She forever hoped to be promoted to head of the English department, but the goal was always just out of reach; she also hoped for Mr. Boynton to marry her, only to be disappointed.

Gale Gordon was Osgood Conklin, the principal of Madison. Gordon, of course, could be terrifically bombastic when his characters would explode in anger, and he seemed to know that Conklin's anger was at its funniest when set to a slow burn. There was a particular knack he had to deliver increasingly histrionic dialogue until suddenly halting and, switching to a calm, mellow voice, would ask Miss Brooks to verify whatever the episode's misunderstanding had been, then hit his top.

Jeff Chandler was Philip Boynton, the bashful biology teacher; Chandler was a legitimate Hollywood heart throb and a radio tough guy who'd played the hardboiled Michael Shayne. His performance as the stammering, awkward Mr. Boynton was a departure for him and really showed off his range.

Richard Crenna was Walter Denton, a helpful student with a piercing nasal voice; Walter thought of himself as a loquacious and erudite young scholar but he would frequently mangle his English, much to Connie's annoyance; he also had a habit of eating up Mrs. Davis' food. Walter would drive Connie to Madison each morning and frequently he would be the one to bring up the episode's particular problem.

Jane Morgan was Margaret Davis, Connie's scatterbrained landlady; she frequently would begin stories about her absent-minded sister Angela, only to forget her own anecdote mid-story.

Gloria McMillan was Harriet Conklin, the principal's daughter and girlfriend to Walter; she was simply a nice girl, but would sometimes unwittingly exacerbate the episode's problem, especially if she thought she was "helping" Miss Brooks.

Other recurring characters included Stretch Snodgrass (Leonard Smith), Madison's star basketball player but also the dimmest character in the school; Miss Enright (Mary Jane Croft), Connie's rival English teacher both for the position as head of the English department and in dating Mr. Boynton; Jacque Monet (Gerald Mohr), the school's French teacher; custodian Mr. Jensen (Bob Jellison), who took his grammar very seriously (such as objecting to the phrase "pick up" when the object in question is above Connie's head); Mrs. Conklin (Virginia Gordon) occasionally appeared; and Mr. Stone (Joseph Kearns), the school's superintendant, who seemed to visit Madison only when things were especially chaotic. There was an appreciable amount of lore as well, such as Madison's rivalry with Clay City High, as their principal Jason Brill was a rival to Mr. Conklin who would sometimes try to lure Madison's faculty to his school; Jason Brill did appear in a few episodes (played by Frank Nelson in one) but he was usually more spoken of than he was present.

CBS ran three auditions before finally launching the series. The 1st audition starred Shirley Booth as the series had originally been intended as a vehicle for her, but she fell out with the producers; the 2nd audition (which we don't have) starred Joan Blondell; finally, Eve Arden was cast in the 3rd audition. The first actual episode was also drawn from the same script as the audition scripts. Beyond the change in lead the role, there are interesting differences between the 3 versions we have of the first script. In the 1st audition, Mr. Conklin was the new President of the school board, rather than the principal. In the 3rd audition, Mr. Conklin was the new principal (but played by Joe Forte) and Jeff Chandler and Richard Crenna took over the roles of Mr. Boynton and Walter Denton; Gale Gordon didn't become Osgood Conklin until the 2nd broadcast episode (which is also when Gloria McMillan debuted as Harriet). It's also interesting that in all the version of the audition script, Walter's mother is set up as an important character on the school board, but she was mostly out-of-focus in the series proper.

I found it interesting that early on, it's established Mrs. Davis went to school with Mr. Conklin; I'd noticed that he always referred to her as "Margaret," but she was portrayed as being much older than he was; anyway, it's only in those early episodes that their past is mentioned. It's also interesting that early on, Mr. Stone was introduced as a former wartime comrade of Mr. Conklin's. Although Mr. Conklin's status as a veteran remained an important part of his character (his style of calling out "dismissed!" at Miss Brooks, for instance), he and Mr. Stone's character bond seemed to disappear and Mr. Stone seemed forever suspicious of Conklin, rather than the guardedly favourable impression he had of Conklin early on.

The series was set around the school, but seldom depicted scenes in the classroom. Usually, scenes were set at Mrs. Davis' home, in Mr. Conklin's office, in Mr. Boynton's biology lab or in the school cafeteria. The series' economy of locations is unusual for a radio series and suggests that from early on, Larry Berns and Al Lewis were thinking how they might adapt their stories to television; the TV series ran from 1952-1956, then ended with a theatrical Our Miss Brooks in which Connie finally got engaged to Mr. Boynton.

Our Miss Brooks let Eve Arden demonstrate she was an extremely capable lead performer, when for most of her career she'd been someone's sidekick (as on the Danny Kaye Show, for instance). Much like Marie Wilson on My Friend Irma, Eve Arden was known, but not a star; Our Miss Brooks became the work she remains best-known for.

The biggest change the show endured during its run was the loss of Jeff Chandler, who was replaced with Robert Rockwell in 1953. Rockwell likewise portrayed Mr. Boynton on the TV series. In fact, the TV version did an excellent job of retaining the radio cast: Eve Arden, the indispensable Gale Gordon, Richard Crenna, Gloria McMillan, Jane Morgan, Joseph Kearns, Virginia Gordon, Mary Jane Croft, even Leonard Smith - all appeared on the small screen.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist with 188 videos (the first 4 are biographies of the cast):

Lubango Vlog: Full CEML Succession Video

I finally had time to upload the full 90+ minute version of my Uncle Steve's succession ceremony at CEML from last month:

Radio Recap: Stars Over Hollywood

Stars Over Hollywood was a half-hour Saturday daytime program heard on CBS from May 31, 1941 to September 25, 1954. It featured stories from all sorts of different genres, most of them radio originals; the attraction was that it featured a big-name Hollywood stars in the lead roles; stars like Vincent Price, Jessica Tandy, William Demarest, David Niven, Ronald Reagan, Lionel Barrymore, Angela Lansbury and Edmund Gwenn. Art Ballinger was the program's host and it was sponsored by Carnation Milk for most of its run.

Paul Pierce (Wild Bill Hickok) was the show's initial producer-director; Hans Conreid directed and acted in many episodes. Ivan Ditmars (of The Adventures of Frank Race, The Diary of Fate, Escape, Frontier Town, The Whistler) supplied music. Apparently a young Rod Serling wrote for this series, but it appears none of his episodes have survived.

According to John Dunning in On the Air, Stars Over Hollywood challenged presumptions in radio that Saturday daytime could draw in listeners; apparently the success of this series caused the networks to start investing money on more daytime Saturday programming than they had previously.

Most of the stories were original scripts, although they did run adaptations of "A Christmas Carol" twice (with Edmund Gwenn as Scrooge). Although the stories featured a host of different genres from comedy to crime, because it was aimed at the housewife demographic it mostly centered itself on relationships - so, romantic dramas or romantic comedies. The two best romantic comedies I've heard are "The Perfect Mate" (December 1, 1951) with a computer matchmaking service.

The best episode of the series by far is also the earliest surviving recording- "Southern Hospitality" (April 18, 1942), with Phil Harris as himself (or, rather, Phil Harris as the person he portrayed on the Jack Benny Program). It concerned Phil being mistaken for a wealthy heir in North Carolina. What helps the episode stand out (besides Phil's vivacious personality) is that his sidekick in the story was Elliott Lewis, several years before he became his sidekick on the Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show!

There are 84 episodes of Stars Over Hollywood in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

25 Years of the Marvel Appendix!

The Marvel Appendix website is celebrating 25 years since its launch! As one of the site's first contributors I created hundreds of new profiles to celebrate the anniversary. They'll be slowly released all through September and I won't post about all of them here, but here's which profiles of mine are available today:

Alpha-Tron (Hydra weapon)

Boswell Boliver (time traveler)

Bull Barton (Kid Colt foe)

Crusher (wrestler, sparred against Captain America)

Deacon (Captain America foe)

The Desert Hawk (Sgt. Fury ally)

John (robot, sci-fi character)

John Warden (S.H.I.E.L.D. psychic)

Josh Kittling (Spider-Man ally)

Manuel (Captain Savage ally)

Marion (Iron Man love interest)

Molecular Condenser (Stilt-Man weapon)

Molecule Ray (The Leader's weapon)

Sen-Yu (Dr. Strange ally, fellow mystic)

Sidney Blake (sci-fi character)

Sonic Shark (anti-Silver Surfer weapon)

Zantor (Atlantean villain)

Radio Recap: Daredevils of Hollywood

"From Hollywood, the motion picture capital of the world, we bring you the thrilling, true life experiences of those men behind the scenes, those daring unsung heroes whose breathtaking adventures on the screen have thrilled millions, whose daily jobs bring them face-to-face with death, those men who comprise the strangest fraternity on earth, the suicide squad, the movie stuntmen, the Daredevils of Hollywood!"

Daredevils of Hollywood was a 15-minute syndicated program that ran from April 25 to July 22, 1938. The series celebrated the profession of Hollywood stuntmen, with each episode focussing on a particular stuntman.

The show would open with a dramatic performance of a stunt, then switch to an interview between Kurt Foreman and the stuntman. The only one of the stuntmen featured on the show who's known today is Yakima Canutt, but the other stuntmen featured were Bob Rose, Cliff Lyons, Ione Reed, Slim Talbot, Matt Gillman, Bob Clark, Frank McGrath, Kansas Mooring, Cecil Kellogg, Eileen Goodwin, Ken Cooper Frank Clark and Gordon Carvette.

I wonder, though, whether the actual stuntmen were being interviewed on the show-- listening carefully to Yakima Canutt, I'd swear that was radio veteran Lou Merrill.

To me, the most interesting tidbit from these programs was during Foreman's interview with Cliff Lyons:

Lyons: "...A few extras will do easy things such as falling down stairs or rolling down a cliff; we call those 'bumps' men.
Foreman: "Tell me, Cliff, what's the difference between a stuntman and a 'bumps' man?"
Lyons: "Well, when a 'bumps' man makes a mistake, he breaks an arm or a leg, but when a stuntman misses, it's curtains."

Frank Nelson narrated most of the events in the dramatic portions; other familiar voices included Hanley Stafford and Joseph Kearns.

The problem with the series for me is that the radio techniques were still a little too primitive; usually, in the opening re-enactment, when the stuntman's life inevitably ends up in danger, it turns into a series of people yelling and trying to describe what's happening. It doesn't make for good radio.

It's also a little irritating that at each episode's halfway mark, the stuntman will start to describe an anecdote, then get cut-off by Foreman, who promises they'll continue the anecdote after the commercial break. It was a deliberate creative choice to lure listeners into sticking around for the rest of the anecdote, but the interruption is always unwelcome.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers have a YouTube playlist of all 26 episodes of Daredevils of Hollywood.

Jack Kirby’s birthday on the Marvel Appendix!

It's the anniversary of Jack Kirby's birth and I celebrated by writing these profiles about some of his creations for the Marvel Appendix!

Number One (Secret Empire leader)

Agent C (Hydra operative)

Bazooka Drill (S.H.I.E.L.D. device)

John Bronson (agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Senator Dudley (S.H.I.E.L.D. Executive Council)

Hover-Limousine (Hydra vehicle)

Metronome Unit (S.H.I.E.L.D. devices)

Morpheus Grenade (S.H.I.E.L.D. weapon)

N.A.P. (S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle)

Porsche 904 (the original S.H.I.E.L.D. flying car)

S.H.I.E.L.D. Marine Division (sea-based S.H.I.E.L.D. squad)

Swamp Buggy (S.H.I.E.L.D. swamp vehicle)

Hydra Undersea Assault Force (Hydra frogman team)

Avengers Helicopter (Avengers aircraft)

Ben Clark (Korean War hero)

Delta Missile (King Arrkam's weapon)

Dreadnought Air-Yacht (Maximus' flagship)

Sea Sled (Inhumans vehicle)

Escape Sub (A.I.M. vehicle)

Hammer Hogan (Rawhide Kid foe)

Magneto's Giant Magnet (I can't wait to tell all my friends; they don't have a magnet this big)

X-Men Jetcopter (X-Men's aircraft)

M'Wabu (Wakandan servant)

The Phantom Whose Touch Means Death (Balder foe; have I mentioned his touch means death?)

Rhamu Rondi (Vision/Aarkus foe)

Shock-Roller (Avengers workout device)

Glenn Stuart (college football star, romance hero)

General von Ritzik (Howling Commandos foe)

X-13 (giant robot)

X-34 (intergalactic starship)

X-35 (X-Model robot)

X-29 (X-Model robot)

X-3 (X-Model robot)

Zarin (Polar Eternals)

Lifters (Makkari's device)

General Greshkov (Eternals character, Celestials foe)

Energy Bomb (Deviant anti-Celestial weapon)

The Delphan Brothers (Eternals, brawlers)

Brain-Mines (Deviant device/weapon)

Mr. Bradford (U.S. government, Eternals ally)

Air Shuttle (Deviant vehicle)

Aginar (Polar Eternal)

Lubango Vlog v.4.6: A Toast to Lubango!

As another visit to Angola winds down, my wife and I toast Lubango in our accustomed fashion.

Lubango Vlog v.4.5: Canadians Still Trying Junk Food in Angola

Yes, it's another vlog about tasting junk food. Join us for a bite!

Radio Recap: The Skippy Hollywood Theatre/Your Movietown Radio Theater

The series known as both The Skippy Hollywood Theatre and Your Movietown Radio Theater was a syndicated program heard from 1941-1949 through Ziv syndication; it then ran on CBS from December 1, 1949 to September 21, 1950. The series offered a variety of familiar names from Hollywood in the starring role of a half-hour drama. I've found that OTR collectors have put episodes from either show title into each other's collections; so be it.

Music was by Del Castillo (Escape) and it was produced, directed and hosted by Les Mitchel, who produced a similar-sounding program I've yet to listen to called The Theatre of Famous Radio Players.

The majority of the stories heard on the program were original dramas, which means if you haven't heard this show before, you'll find plenty of unfamiliar tales. One of the few adaptations I've heard is "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The stories are a mixed bag; for example, the episode "Sound of Her Voice" is a comedic supernatural story that riffs on Robert Louis Stevenson's "the Magic Bottle," in which a man obtains a genie but the story's primarily about how annoying the voice of the man's wife is. It's not successful as a comedy. Otherwise, I didn't find this series very remarkable.

The series did have a lot of light, comedic fare. Two that I enjoyed was the romantic comedy "Girl in the Galaxy" with a lovestruck astronomer and "A Book on Rock Gardening," a screwball comedy about children who give their father a thoughtless gift that consumes his life.

There are 42 episodes in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library collection of The Skippy Hollywood Theatre and 66 episodes of Your Movietown Radio Theater - there's duplication between the two series and at least one misfiled episode from another series.

Blogging from Angola

Just a reminder that my wife and I also blog about our experiences in Angola on our website; at our blog you can learn about the murals we're designing, the inventory we're taking and other observations about Angola. Check it out!

New Vlog: More of Tasting Junk Food in Angola!

The right day for a junk food tasting video is everyday!

Radio Recap: Presenting Charles Boyer

"That is Michel: Adventurer, bon vivant, connoisseur of words, wine and women! Our Michel is a familiar sight on the boulevards of Paris and the rumor is that he was born wearing a top hat, white tie, and tail! Michel, in the person of Mr. Charles Boyer, is perhaps the most fascinating barnacle ever to fasten on the ship of Parisian society. There he sits, in the Tour de Jean; impeccable and impecunious, telling his story to his author friend, Bart Conway."

Presenting Charles Boyer was a summer show on NBC from July 4-September 12, 1950. It was a summer replacement for Fibber McGee and Molly and starred, of course, Charles Boyer, the famous romantic lead. Boyer's career was in a bit of a slump, but his name was so well-known that it's no wonder the show was named for him.

As outlined in the intro, above, Boyer portrayed Michel, a penniless Frenchman whose life was full of romance and adventure. To make a buck, he'd tell his stories to Bart Conway (Hanley Stafford).

For a 1950s NBC dramatic program, it thankfully has its own unique musical score (primarily using the accordion).

Presenting Charles Boyer is fine for what it is - Michel is basically the same as Harry Lime in the Lives of Harry Lime, so fans of one show will almost certainly like the other.

There are 18 episodes of Presenting Charles Boyer (2 of them are auditions) in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

New vlog: CEML Succession

On August 7, my Uncle Steve stepped down as director of medical seevices at CEML in favour of Dr. Sam Fabiano. I was there with my wife and we recorded most of the 2-hour service. I've made this video of highlights; it's all in Portuguese.

Lubango Vlog v:4:2: Canadians Try Junk Food in Angola

Since 2021, I've been making videos about junk food in Angola. I'm not done yet!

Radio Recap: Unit 99

"The job of a police officer is your protection; the cases you hear on this radio program are real cases; the police are real, the victims and the criminals are real; we are glad to provide Unit 99 and Sergeant Meredith so that you will hear how the police of a great city work night and day for your protection! Make no mistake about it, there are no actors on these tapes they are real from beginning to end; now to Unit 99 and Sergeant Meredith:"

Unit 99 was a latter-day old-time radio show, heard over ABC from June 2, 1956 to October 3, 1957. It doesn't seem to have been well-researched - at some stages it was a half-hour show, at others 15 minutes.

Unit 99 appears to be ABC's attempt to follow CBS' series Night Watch; like that series, it follows a policeman in his patrol car as he responds to various incidents. However, while Night Watch was mediated by reporter Donn Reed, Unit 99 used just policeman Sgt. Don Meredith to address the audience - so sometimes he's being followed by a microphone, at other times he speaking something very rehearsed.

It lacks the visceral impact Night Watch had at it's best because people sound a little too polished - my guess is that they were told to repeat something they'd said before when the microphone was brought up (Night Watch would censor profanity; it's not clear to me that anyone on Unit 99 even used profanity). There are also instances where the police are way too patronizing to the people they encounter, such as when they meet a man who was attacked but doesn't want to press charges, causing them to pressure him into reconsidering. It's inferior to Night Watch but okay if listening to a police ride-along is your idea of entertainment.

There are 177 episodes of Unit 99 in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

New Essay: West Wing in a Kitty Suit: Politics in Christopher Priest’s Black Panther

My latest essay on Christopher Priest's Black Panther is up at Sequart: "West Wing in a Kitty Suit"! In this essay I discuss how Priest used politics in his stories.

Radio Recap: The Grantland Rice Story

The Grantland Rice Story was a 15-minute syndicated program released from September 17, 1955 to September 8, 1956. It was based on the writings of Grantland Rice, a famous sports reporter who had died just before the series was made. In the show, Jimmy Powers would read from Rice's autobiography The Tumult and the Shouting (1945), giving the series a feel similar to that of a book-on-tape. Some episodes feature interviews between Powers and other sports writers who knew Rice, and with some of the sports figures whom Rice wrote about.

I found this a surprisingly interesting program; Rice met a lot of famous athletes in his time and there are lively anecdotes about some; it's also a look into a bygone age, something Powers remarked at the opening of the series as sports journalism in newspapers had already been greatly transformed due to television broadcasting. It also looks at sports which were not widely-known at the time, such as Rice's writing on the golf craze (I noted this phenomenon when I reviewed Judge magazine).

You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection of The Grantland Rice Story through the playlist below:

2026 Hugo Awards

I've never previously voted in the Hugo Awards, but at the urging from my friend Olav at An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog, I decided to try this year.

Now, I read a lot of contemporary comic books and non-fiction, but not much contemporary fiction -- and I've never been an authority on science fiction. I like what I like, but I don't have an expert's view on the genre.

In preparing to vote, I read a lot of material I would have never otherwise sampled. My first surprise was to find a lot of what's nominated in the Hugo Awards isn't for science fiction works - there's an awful lot of fantasy literature - stories of elves, magic schools and what have you. I'm even less qualified to judge the fantasy genre.

The second surprise was how much of the material that is science fiction isn't concerned so much with plot as it is character - not, "here's a science fiction concept," as it is, "here's how the protagonist feels about living amidst science fiction."

I won't discuss all my picks, but for Best Novel I chose Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor, a Nigerian science fiction author. The book's about a Nigerian science fiction author (write what you know) whose life changes when new technology helps her get out of her wheelchair.

For Best Novella, I chose Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz, a story about robots who exploit bureaucratic loopholes so they can run their own noodle shop. It was charming.

For Best Novelette, I chose The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed, which covers transgenderism, cloning and wallcrawling in a very tight package.

For Best Short Story, I chose Laser Eyes Ain't Everything by Effie Seiberg, about a super-hero union and a villain who has a legitimate complaint about accessibility.

For Best Series, I broke my rule on picking science fiction titles and chose The Chronicles of Osreth by Katherine Addison. I read her book The Goblin Emperor years ago and didn't realize she'd added several more books to the series - I like the series a lot, so I was very happy to discover there was more.

For Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, I chose Andor, which was a very hard call - I'd really enjoyed Sinners (if it were horror awards, I'd have picked it) and Superman; I watched Mickey 17 before sending my vote and found it very strong too. Andor, though, had a 2nd season that excelled beyond what I already had considered to be a very strong first season; it's the best Star Wars of this century.

And, of course, I chose An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog for Best Fanzine.

This was fun - I don't know whether I'll vote in the Hugos again, but I've added a number of books to my reading list, so it was worth doing at least once.

Radio Recap: Can You Imagine That?

Can You Imagine That? was a 15-minute syndicated program heard from March 11 to June 5, 1940. It was hosted, written and directed by Lindsay MacHarrie.

Can You Imagine That? featured stories about little-known facts, rather like Ripley's Believe It or Not. What makes it interesting to listen to is that the anecdotes are mostly dramatized; as the show is very short and contains multiple anecdites per episode, the dramas are very quick but well done. Each episode concluded with a story about a famous song, often examining how the song was based on an older tune but with different lyrics. Can You Imagine That? is fine for the type of program it is.

You can hear the Old Time Radio Researchers' collection of Can You Imagine That through the playlist below:

The Lubango vlog is back!

I'm heading back to Lubango with my wife on a new mission trip; here's my new vlog with details!

Radio Recap: Unsolved Mysteries

Unsolved Mysteries was a 15-minute syndicated program from 1936. It featured a variety of "unsolved" mysteries - some of them with supernatural overtones. Many of these will be familiar to fans of true crimes and the supernatural, such as the Lizzie Borden affair, the "mystery" of the Marie Celeste. There's also stories of zombies in Haiti and a pretty good story of seemingly-magical foreknowledge dubbed, "The Toll-Bridge Mystery."

As the episode would near its conclusion, the narrator would announce:

"Out of deference to people who are still alive, character names in these Unsolved Mysteries have been changed. In as much as any solution must of necessity be supposition, liberties of time, place and character exist in the solution that will be presented after you have heard from your sponsor."

The solutions offered by Unsolved Mysteries tend to reject the supernatural where it's present, instead offering reasonable explanations for how events might have transpired. It's a pretty good, rather unsung series, one of the better 1930s syndicated shows I've heard.

There are 27 episodes of Unsolved Mysteries in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Radio Recap: Famous Jury Trials

Famous Jury Trials was an early crime program, heard from January 5, 1936 to June 25, 1949; it started on Mutual, then went to NBC Blue and remained there when the network became ABC. The series drew from real-life criminal cases and dramatized the trials. For example, one episode concerns the trial of Aaron Burr.

The cast included actors like Maurice Franklin, Roger DeKoven, DeWitt McBride, Raymond Edward Johnson, Frank Readick and Mandel Kramer. I'm sure I heard Bill Johnstone as well. It was produced and written by Don Becker.

The series would relate events from within the courtroom; rather than re-enacting the crimes, the crimes would instead be described for the jury, which did, of course, make events appear more subjective.

In the 1950s there was another version of this series produced for Australian radio. Most of what still exists is from the Australian run and collectors haven't done a great job of setting them apart; they tend to be filed together in collections.

There are 6 episodes of Famous Jury Trials in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library; there are more episodes out there, although most of the surviving programs appear to be from the Australian run.

Radio Recap: Europe Confidential

Europe Confidential was another program from producer Harry Alan Towers, the man behind The Black Musem, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Lives of Harry Lime and Theatre Royal.

As in Towers' other programs, Europe Confidential boasted a big name to draw in listeners - in this case, Basil Rathbone - but Basil was only there to host the episodes (he introdced it under a different title: "The World's Greatest Mysteries."). He would instead introduce the adventures of protagonist Mike Kinoy; it sounds like Towers used the same recording of Rathbone's introduction in every episode:

"In drama and fiction, newspapermen are invariably tough hard-boiled characters. In real life this is, well, it's not necessarily true, although several newspaper men I've known were as colourful as anything fiction has ever had to offer. Mike, whom you'll meet in a moment, is based on a real person who actually works for the European edition of a famous American newspaper. Not only is the character real, but, well, many of the stories which Mike tells are also based on fact. The tale you're going to hear today, for instance, you may even recognize from the headlines in your newspaper of, well, not so long ago. In a moment, Mike will introduce you to another mystery solved and signed with his own unmistakable trademark: Europe Confidential."

I've tried to be nice to Towers' works in my previous recaps but I have nothing kind to say about Europe Confidential; it uses the same musical bridges in his other works but he seemed inept in employing them, striking a suspenseful chord when nothing suspenseful had happened; exciting music when nothing exciting is happening. It's simply a dull program, I cannot recommend it, not even if you want to hear Rathbone slumming.

There are 22 episodes of Europe Confidential in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

It's a Happy Canada Day on the Marvel Appendix!

Hapy Canada Day! To celebrate, I wrote a number of Canadian profiles based on characters from disparite corners of the Marvel Universe; there's Kerry Patrick (Canadian government liaison to Alpha Flight), Sea Gull Isle (Red Skull's Canadian base), James Matthews (Canadian vacationer, Marvel-Two-in-One character), Slug Gundy (Canadian Sub-Mariner foe), Lt. Clyde Favor (Canadian World War I hero), The Frozen Ghost (Canadian horror monster), Claude Dijon (Canadian Rawhide Kid foe), Marcel D'Ermonville (French-Canadian romance hero), Patrick Carter (Canadian RCMP officer) and Alberta Icecutters (Canadian hockey team, Kickers, Inc. foes).

THE NEW UNIVERSE AT 40: A LOOK BACK AT MARVEL’S UNWANTED RELATIVE Part 4

 

THE NEW UNIVERSE AT 40: A LOOK BACK AT MARVEL’S UNWANTED RELATIVE

BY MICHAEL HOSKIN

PART 4: WHITED OUT

NEWUNIVERSAL AND UNTOLD TALES

In 2006, Warren Ellis announced he would be rebooting the New Universe with artist Salvador Larroca in the series newuniversal. “Reading the original work,” Ellis told Wizard magazine, “it became clear to me that all the books were attempting to tell the same story, but the effect was muted by half a dozen writers naturally pulling themselves in half a dozen different directions. Newuniversal pulls all these books into a single series, weaving all those stories into one.”

Before newuniversal launched – but after it had been announced – editor Mark Paniccia launched an event titled Untold Tales of the New Universe to celebrate the New Universe’s 20^th anniversary. As Paniccia explained to Comic Book Resources, “We thought it would be fun to go back to the New U one last time before Warren did his thing.”

Untold Tales of the New Universe would include new stories of all eight of the original headliners: one-shots for Star Brand, Justice, D.P.7, Psi-Force and Nightmask; 8-page back-up stories starring Mark Hazzard and Spitfire that appeared in Amazing Fantasy; and an 8-page Kickers, Inc. story that appeared in New Avengers #16 to promote the other stories.

Peter David was the only New Universe writer to pen one of the Untold Tales, returning to write Justice one last time. Despite his apathy towards Star Brand, John Romita Jr. drew the one-shot’s cover. Marshall Rogers also came back to draw the Spitfire story, one of his last published stories. Otherwise, the Untold Tales fell to other hands, including artist Mark Bright (D.P.7), writer and future editor-in-chief C. B. Cebulski (D.P.7), Exiles writer Tony Bedard (Psi-Force), writer Jeff Parker (Star Brand) and writer Fred Van Lente (Nightmask).

Looking back at the New Universe, Mark Paniccia noted, “I think the thing that's been most fascinating for me is to look back at this attempt to create something new from universes that organically happened (Marvel and DC) and see just how difficult a job that can be. It's been tried so many times after with companies too numerous to mention. It ran for 3 years, though, and that's pretty impressive.”

Rather than follow-up on the New Universe in 2006, obeying its real-time rules, Untold Tales of the New Universe set its stories within the imprint’s first year of publishing. Indeed, the Spitfire story was set prior to the events of Spitfire and the Troubleshooters #1! Fred Van Lente used his Nightmask story to finally tie-up the cliffhanger Archie Goodwin had left in Nightmask #4, 20 years earlier.

In his Star Brand one-shot, Jeff Parker went meta; his story, set just before John Byrne’s first issue, featured Ken Connell meeting a multiverse traveler named Arden who learned about Connell through reading comic books about him from another reality (which is to say, Arden did the same research Jeff Parker had). Arden told Connell she’d found the comic books underwhelming. “No one here should really have anything like the power you have, Ken,” Arden stated, “So essentially, nature itself keeps throwing mundane situations and relationships at you… like some self-correcting mechanism.”

Warren Ellis’ newuniversal proved a different take on the New Universe; in this version, Ken Connell received the Star Brand from the White Event while asleep and its destructive power destroys his girlfriend. Simultaneously, Izanami Randall was a female, Japanese American equivalent of Nightmask who discovered an extraterrestrial intelligence existing within the Superflow, a space between universes. Philip L. Voight was introduced as a government agent who hunts and kills superhumans to prevent them from supplanting humanity.

Unlike the New Universe before it, newuniversal didn’t depart from real world history at the moment of the White Event; Ellis’ scripts were peppered with references to divergences from real world history, such as John Lennon being alive in 2006. One character was even seen attempting to diagram when the planet’s divergence moment occurred. There were also minor appearances by characters from the Marvel Universe, such as General Ross from Incredible Hulk, whereas the New Universe eschewed Marvel Universe counterparts. The presence of Marvel’s characters sent a subtle message: Gruenwald intended the New Universe to exist within the Omniverse; Ellis was planting it within the Marvel Multiverse.

More bizarrely, Ellis chose to tie newuniversal into the obscure sword & sorcery character Starr the Slayer, who had appeared in a single issue of Chamber of Darkness in 1970 when creators Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith were still trying to lobby Marvel to pick up the Conan the Barbarian license.

When he heard about Ellis’ newuniversal, Fabian Nicieza joked, “Let me guess: He deconstructed the super-hero myth, and he left before he bothered to reconstruct it?” Nicieza guessed correctly; newuniversal ran just six issues with Ellis and Larroca. It returned as newuniversal: Shock Front with artist Steve Kurth replacing Larroca, but at that time Ellis lost the hard drive to his computer and his scripts after issue #2 of Shock Front were lost. Shock Front, like most of the books Ellis’ had been writing at the time, was abandoned rather than being rewritten from scratch. Marvel attempted to keep newuniversal going, first with the one shots newuniversal: 1959 by Kieron Gillen, then newuniversal: Conqueror by Si Spurrier, followed by a Starr the Slayer mini-series by Daniel Way and Richard Corben, but just as these placeholder titles wrapped up, Ellis informed his readers newuniversal would not continue.

Or, at least, it wouldn’t continue under Ellis’ pen.

ANOTHER WHITE EVENT?!

Jonathan Hickman had evidently been reading newuniversal – specifically that series rather than the New Universe titles. First, he used the Star Brand in a Fantastic Four story where it was wielded by an alternate reality’s Reed Richards. Then, while writing the Avengers, he brought back the Superflow from newuniversal and introduced Earth-616’s counterparts to Nightmask and Ken Connell; while the new Nightmask was an artificially grown man named Adam Blackveil, the new wielder of the Star Brand was Kevin Conner.

In a story titled “The Last White Event,” Kevin Conner received the Star Brand in a violent fashion, similar to Ellis’ version in newuniversal – but where newuniversal had killed Ken Connell’s girlfriend, Kevin Conner was at a crowded college in Pittsburgh when he received the Star Brand; the explosion was said to have killed 3,203 people. This was familiar to readers of the Pitt – the idea of the Star Brand being destructive and poorly-understood by the person wielding it.

Yet while the scope of the deaths in Hickman’s story was less than the Pitt, the consequences were telling. That is, while Kevin Conner continued to stumble and falter in his use of the Star Brand (generally being more destructive than necessary), the 3,000+ lives snuffed out in his origin did not come up again. The Pitt took time to consider the environmental, social and political repercussions of destroying an entire city; even in newuniversal, Ellis’ Ken Connell spent the rest of the book’s short run traumatized from his girlfriend’s death – but in the Marvel Universe, deaths are mere numbers on a spreadsheet.

With New Universe concepts now formally introduced into the Marvel Universe, interest was taken by Al Ewing, who debuted a variety of counterparts to New Universe characters in his series the Ultimates². These included Jim Tensen (instead of John Tensen), Terry Jessup (instead of Tyrone Jessup) and Philip Nelson Vogt (instead of Philip Nolan Voigt).

Eventually, Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers storyline led to the collapse of the Marvel multiverse, setting up the 2015 Secret Wars crossover event. Afterward, a new version of the Squadron Supreme was introduced who were comprised of counterparts of traditional Squadron Supreme members taken from different alternate Earths that had been destroyed in the crossover. Jeff Walters of D.P.7 – using his occasional codename the Blur – took the place of the Whizzer. Sadly, this meant the New Universe had been destroyed (or maybe not; another cast member in Squadron Supreme eventually discovers their reality is intact).

CONCLUSION

Many of the architects of the New Universe have passed on: Mark Gruenwald in 1996; Archie Goodwin in 1998; Gray Morrow in 2001; Herb Trimpe in 2015; Paul Ryan in 2016; Peter David and Jim Shooter in 2025; Gerry Conway in 2026.

It’s in the White Event itself that the New Universe proved to be somewhat ahead of its time. In the decades since 1986, many other writers have similarly indicated that, like Mark Gruenwald, they prefer a common point of origin for super-powers in their fiction. Starting in 1987, there was the Wild Cards series of prose novels where all super-powers originated from an alien virus. Nearly all of the superhumans in Milestone’s comics debuting in 1993 obtained their powers from “the Big Bang,” an explosion of mutagenic tear gas. In 1999, J. Michael Straczynski started writing Rising Stars, a comic book series where all the characters’ abilities appeared after a comet landed on Earth. Starting in 2003, Straczynski also wrote Supreme Power, a reboot of Squadron Supreme, but wherein nearly all the characters received their super-powers from manipulation of the hero Hyperion’s DNA; Straczynski even replaced the Squadron Supreme’s speedster the Whizzer with D.P.7’s the Blur. The 2006 television series Heroes opened with super-powers emerging following an eclipse (although the series would eventually decide their super-beings had been around long before the eclipse).

Even in Marvel’s own Ultimate Universe, it would be decided (in Brian Michael Bendis & Butch Guice’s 2008 Ultimate Origins) that all of the Earth’s superhumans (including mutants) were the result of long-ago genetic manipulation. From the Boys to Misfits, it seems more common in today’s fiction for all superhumans to share a common origin, rather than a variety of independent origins.

Although Avengers writer Jason Aaron killed Kevin Conner in 2017, he continued to use the Star Brand in his Avengers stories. For that matter, a version of Ken Connell turned up as recently as 2025’s Battleworld mini-series by Christos Gage and Marcus To. The New Universe’s influence continues to appear in present-day Marvel comics.

“Marvel did not get out of the New Universe what Shooter’s original goal and idea for it was,” Fabian Nicieza opined. Yet Fabian observed many positives that came from the New Universe: “In some ways, New Universe, the comics, was a great fertile testing ground for a lot of people, not the least of which was Jim Shooter, the guy who created it all because it proved his fertile testing ground that he was able to manifest in Valiant. For the rest of us, we got me and we got Ron Lim and we got Mark Bagley, and we had Lee Weeks, and we got a lot of new talent that got an opportunity to hone their skills on books that not that many people were paying attention to.”

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