"...As though I've been waiting all my life for this moment!" What is... the Face#1 review

Yesterday I brought up Ron Frantz's short-lived A.C.E. comics; many of his books utilized Charlton talents who had been run out of work by the publisher's collapse; the series What is... the Face arrived in 1986 at a point in Steve Ditko's career where he had just burned his bridges with Eclipse and (temporarily) run out of assignments at Marvel, so it must have been welcome work; it also re-teamed Ditko with Joe Gill, another Charlton talent.

I don't know much more about the Face than what's available online about him - he's a 1940s costumed hero who wore a scary mask - that's it. Ron Frantz went to the bother of acquiring the copyright of the character for this series, yet, curiously, he turned up in Dynamite's Project Superpowers books on the apparent assumption he lay in the public domain; Frantz also picked up the copyright to Skyman, which hasn't prevented Dark Horse from likewise usurping the character. Perhaps Frantz accidentally let the rights expire, but something doesn't smell right...

The painted cover by Rick Courtney isn't quite appropriate for the series - the bloody violence of a man being shot in an alley will not be replicated by Ditko within. I also feel like putting Ditko on the cover would have turned a few more heads.

We begin "the Ransomed City" (plotted & edited by Frantz, scripted by Gill, penciled by Ditko, inked by Frank McLaughlin) with a half-splash of the Face firing his gun at criminals, but this is a flash-forward - the Face won't really enter the tale until page 11.

Instead, we open on Tony Trent, a crusading television journalist determined to use his exposes to break up the criminal underworld headed by Louis "the Duke" Arno. Arno is infuriated, but rather than see Trent killed, he decides to find out who Trent's sources are and kill them instead to keep others from coming forward; he's the proactive gangster! We meet Trent's supporting cast, consisting of Janet Baxter (a district attorney? or police official? who wants Trent's help and seems smitten with him), Lt. Grogan (who wants Trent to give up his sources to the police) and station owner Mr. Cooper (who wants Trent to stop his stories before an inevitable libel suit).

While Trent is working in his office with the safe containing his secret papers exposed, someone turns off the lights, knocks Trent unconscious and steals the evidence Trent had been planning to use against Arno. Trent suspects maintenance worker Larson or Cooper's flunky Karsen could be behind the theft (in fact, it's Larson). Trent goes on the air to accuse Arno without proof, but cameraman Dempsey uses a trick camera to shoot Trent in the chest; Larson "helps" Dempsey escape in the aftermath by shoving him out a window.

Trent survives the gunshot because he thought to wear a bulletproof vest; realizing there's no evidence linking Arno to the attempt on his life, Trent decides to follow in his grandfather's footsteps and move outside the law. Returning to his home, Trent opens a chest containing his grandfather's colt .45 and mask; he becomes the new Face! He kept the .45 in working condition, thinking one day he might have to resort to vigilantism to fight crime.

Arno's home is protected with electronic alarms and guard dogs, so the Face lowers a rope to Arno's roof from an adjacent building; he breaks in just as Arno has killed Larson to prevent Larson from revealing what he knows. The Face battles Arno's henchmen and you might now be wondering why an investigative journalist could possibly manage to descend upon rooftops, leap through windows and battle an entire gang single-handed; a throw-away line establishes Trent studied martial arts (for someone who didn't reveal his connection to the Face until the 11th page, he'd certainly been prepared for this!).

Sounds of gunfire in Arno's home draw in the police, but Arno tries to claim the Face is an intruder and the one who murdered Larson. The Face realizes he's in a bad spot and drops a smoke bomb (apparently he also packed smoke bombs) then leaps out a window, dodging police gunfire. Later, Trent visits the police station and learns Grogan has an APB to capture the Face; moving on from this, Trent asks out Janet on a date.

The second feature includes an illustration of the Face as host with the header "the Face presents a tale of the macabre!" This second feature was originally created for Pyramid's Treasury of Terror paperback: it's Lord Dunsany's "Two Bottles of Relish," adapted by Mart Bailey. The adaptation tries to follow the events of the story as original published but gets terribly fumbled up; the Dunsany story is a fantastically gruesome piece, but the adapter doesn't seem to know how to get across Dunsany's subtlety; I was only able to understand the story as presented because I had read the original, it doesn't work as is.

There's also a reprint of a 1940 Face adventure by Gardner F. Fox & Mart Bailey - it has very poor reproduction values, it was probably copied from the original comic, unlike the carefully-restored Daredevil story from yesterday's post. Weirdly, this adventure of the Face was ripped-off in 1941's Mystic Comics#5 to introduce the super hero Moon Man; same plot, many of the same layouts and dialogue - how embarrassing... for the Face, I mean, being mentioned in the same paragraph as Moon Man. Just to fill space, there's a one-page gag strip starring 'Skool' Yardley.

The back-up features are definitely a mixed bag, but the Face is an all right feature - kind of typical Ditko. McLaughlin's inks are at times quite heavy, adding textures Ditko would have definitely omitted had he been inking himself. Gill's script keeps the tale from becoming too typically Ditkoesque (speaking as one who found Ditko's contemporaneous Static tiresome), but the plot takes just a little too long to turn Trent into the Face and does so without "playing fair" - his sudden shopping bag full of needed skills and weapons are a little too convenient. Still, the Face is an appealingly simple hero, bearing only a gun and a Halloween mask in his war against crime.

I've got a high tolerance for black & white Steve Ditko art; taken as a whole, I dug it.

"With Greta Garbo's feet I never would have made it!" A.C.E. Comics Presents#1 review

Over the last year, the fanzine Ditkomania has seen a number of articles and letters from Ron Frantz, who published A.C.E. Comics in the 1980s. I had never heard of A.C.E. before, but Frantz's recollections of working with Steve Ditko back then drew my curiosity, so I've picked up some A.C.E. books from the back issue market.

A.C.E. Comics Presents#1 only features Ditko on the cover - but it's quite a cool cover, no? There we have the Golden Age Daredevil in combat against the Claw, displaying such frantic energy I wish it had been Ditko on the interiors!

The interior is a black & white reprint of "Daredevil Battles the Claw" by Jack Cole from 1941. In this, the somewhat-Oriental and quite-freakish being the Claw launches an assault on the city where Daredevil lives; armed with a mere boomerang, Daredevil leaps into action against the Claw, wise-cracking all the way.

I wasn't aware Daredevil was a wise-cracking super hero - and now I suddenly realize why some 1960s comic book fans were quite miffed at Stan Lee, as his original personality for Marvel's Daredevil is definitely similar. Of course, Jack Cole was uniquely madcap and this - this is very, rather extremely Cole. Not only in Daredevil's wisecracks, but in the sheer unreality of the situation - the Claw's height is wickedly inconsistent from panel to panel and you're never quite sure how large the rooms in his headquarters are supposed to be. At one point, Daredevil runs out of a pit through momentum by running up the circular walls which... I don't think even Donald O'Connor could pull it off. But it makes perfect sense coming from the man who created Midnight and Plastic Man.

Following this is "The Finger of Death Points at Silver Streak" also by Jack Cole from 1940. This one features the super-fast super hero Silver Streak but it's not wacky at all - this earlier story takes the material seriously, and is thus not much better than any other 1940s super hero comic; only Cole's energetic art keeps it interesting. The Silver Streak battles a gang of mad bombers in this one and Cole finds a few neat way to use his powers, as when he hurls bricks with "machine gun" velocity.

Obviously, reprinted content only tells you about a publisher's interests; tomorrow, I'll delve into an actual A.C.E. original story!

Six comic strip stars who lost the spotlight

As I learn more about comic strip history through my work on the U of C's comic art collection, it's interesting to see how many strips evolved over the years - in some instances by casting off their original protagonists in favour of a new one, sometimes with dramatically different results!

Here are six starring characters who found themselves diminished - or outright put out of work.

Barney Google

Began as the star of: Take Barney Google, F'rinstance, 1919, wherein our pint-sized hero debuted as a gambling sportsman; over the years he would acquire his famous horse Spark Plug, appear in animated shorts, become featured in one strangely-preserved song ("Barney Google Foxtrot") and have a search engine named after him.

Supplanted by: Snuffy Smith, a hillbilly who indulges in hillbilly antics; he entered the strip in 1934 and took it over in 1954; you may be surprised to learn this strip is still being published as Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, albeit Google's name is little more than a legacy.

Lesson learned: Horse racing jokes become dated; hillbillies are a bottomless jug of comedy.

Mitzi McCoy

Began as the star of: Mitzi McCoy, 1948, presented there as the glamourous heroine of a soap opera.

Supplanted by: Kevin the Bold, her swashbuckling 15th century ancestor who shamelessly took over the strip in 1950 and held on 'til 1968 (Mitzi is such a minor footnote I had tremendous difficulty finding just one image of her).

Lesson learned: Unless Geena Davis or Roman Polanski are involved, swashbuckling always wins out.

Castor Oyl

Began as the star of: Thimble Theater, 1919, wherein our pint-sized hero headed an ensemble cast in comical variations on melodramatic stories.

Supplanted by: A new ensemble player named Popeye the Sailor, who swaggered his way into the strip in 1929 and within a year made it his own and has remained so featured to this day; although Popeye served as the primary romantic interest of Castor's sister Olive, ensuring Castor would never be forgotten, his presence diminished to the point where Castor is as much a piece of trivia as anything.

Lesson learned: Beware the character whose personality is more outrageous than yours; you yam what you yam and that's that you yam.

Fritzi Ritz

Began as the star of: Fritzi Ritz, 1922, wherein our glamourous protagonist engaged in comedic/romantic escapades much like other lady "flapper" stars of the time (ie, Winnie Winkle, Tillie the Toiler).

Supplanted by: Nancy, her adorable niece who debuted in 1933 and took over by 1938, delegating her aunt to a subservient role as a "mother type." Nancy runs in papers to this day.

Lesson learned: The public's not interested in beautiful, independent women. Cute kids, that'll never get old.

G. Washington Tubbs III

Began as the star of: Washington Tubbs III, 1924, wherein our pint-sized hero went on largely comedic adventures, seeking to find his place in the world through the circus, acting and even soldiering.

Supplanted by: His pal Captain Easy, who helped Tubbs out of one jam during 1929 and - excepting occasional absences - never left. In 1933, Easy took over Tubbs' Sunday pages and by the 1940s, Tubbs had been virtually retired; the strip kept his name, but Captain Easy remained in charge 'til the end in 1988.

Lesson learned: We empathize with your everyman hero who struggles to make a mark in this world, but all told we'd rather be the muscular, no-nonsense tough guy sidekick.

Big Chief Wahoo

Began as the star of: Big Chief Wahoo, 1936, wherein our pint-sized hero with his hilarious mode of speech engaged in comedic escapades while brushing up against paleface society.

Supplanted by: Steve Roper, an adventurous photojournalist who began edging Wahoo out in 1944, then renamed the strip after himself in 1947 and kept it 'til the 2004 finale; along the way, Roper picked up his own subordinate, Mike Nomad, pushing the strip's original star even further into obscurity.

Lesson learned: Stereotyping the indigenous peoples will always be funny, so the lesson must obviously be the fickle public just aren't into pint-sized heroes.

Review: Weird Tales, July 1950

My first foray into Weird Tales proved a little disappointing, but let's see how the July, 1950 issue stacks up:

Right off the bat we have a much more interesting cover, care of horror cover maestro (and frequent comic artist) Matt Fox. But how are the stories?

"The Weird Tailor" by Robert Bloch. Once again, a great Bloch tale visits the pages of Weird Tales, but this time it leads the contents, rather than being lost in the middle. Horror aficionados probably know this one - it was adapted to the TV horror series Thriller in 1961 and served as one segment of the anthology film Asylum (1972). The title is actually something of a misnomer - the tailor isn't weird; his client might be described as weird; the cloth the client gives to the tailor is the textbook definition of weird!

"The cloth was gray. No, it couldn't be gray, because it had little flecks that reflected the light. It was gold. But gold does not shimmer in rainbow hues. It was a peculiar offshade of tan. But tan is not green, and there was green in this cloth, also some red and blue. No, it was gray. It had to be gray."

I love that paragraph; anyway, it's a great story about a mysterious bolt of fabric, the odd suit made from it, one man's quest to conquer death and some cosmic comeuppance.

"Shallajai" by Arthur J. Burks seems to barely qualify for Weird Tales; it's a gentle fantasy, not horror, holding more in common to Hans Christian Anderson's "the Garden of Eden" than anything. Anyway, two men find paradise in the middle of the Gobi desert and the head man in paradise drones on and on about how great it all is but how so few get to appreciate it... it has the sense to namedrop James Hilton's Lost Horizon, but not enough chops to craft a paradise as enveloping as Hilton's Shangri-La.

"The Rhythm of the Rats" by Eric Frank Russell is a decent, but obvious tale; a man survives a plane crash and finds himself in a quiet German town where the entire population is afraid of what goes on at night. Matt Fox's accompanying illustration of a demonic Pied Piper basically tells you the story's secret right off the bat.

"Rebels' Rest" by Seabury Quinn is an odd duck. It turns out to be the story of a woman who falls in love with a ghost, but for some reason the story ends on that point during the last page - the build-up involves the life story of the woman's mother. Perhaps it was puffed up to fill pages.

"Woe Water" by H. Russell Wakefield tells a decent story pulled from the diary of a man who's taken a new property to escape the many unsavory rumours about him killing his wife, only to wind up killing his manservant and being haunted over it all.

"Cordona's Skull" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman delves into an out-of-work stage magician who befriends a medium who uses a specially-rigged human skull to deliver his phony prophecies. The magician plans a hostile takeover of the medium's business, but the skull has other plans

"The Closing Door" by August Derleth is kind of a mess - a mystery about a vanished priest being solved by a sexton... it has a very choppy ending.

"Mrs. Hawk" by Margaret St. Clair tells it's story quickly; why do Mrs. Hawks' hogs seem so anthropomorphic? Fortunately, the story soon drops Circe's name so the reader isn't ahead of the character for too long, although he still winds up being extremely foolish.

"Fly Down Death" by Cleve Cartmill involves a scientist who made himself and one other man immortal; after hundreds of years, the scientist finds a cure for immortality so he can die with dignity, but feeling the other man has squandered his years, decides not to share it, instead intending the other to live forever as a monument to his science. It's a good premise which doesn't have quite enough room to explore the idea.

Poems in this issue were "the City" by H.P. Lovecraft and "Pattern" by Dorothy Quick; unlike the previous issue's space-fillers, these are given plenty of space for their lines.

One more issue of Weird Tales remains...

"Your vanilla-breath made me hallucinate!" The Fox#2-5

This month Dean Haspiel's 5-issue series the Fox drew to a close at Archie Comics - although Haspiel has indicated he intends to do more with the character. It's been a fun, creative and diverting super hero comic published in a time when super hero comics are sorely lacking in fun and creativity. Not only did Haspiel plot & draw this mini, he seems to have virtually edited it by himself! He recruited Mark Waid to script issues #1-4 and J.M. DeMatteis to contribute a Shield back-up story in #2-4, then script #5; artists Mike Cavallaro & Terry Austin drew the Shield back-ups and letterer supreme John Workman completed the ensemble.

In my review of issue#1, I covered Haspiel's premise - photojournalist Paul Patton is the semi-retired super hero the Fox, seeking only to lead a normal life yet forever cursed as a "freak magnet" to find outlandish adventure everywhere he turns. It's not necessary to know anything about the Fox's history at Archie - in fact, Haspiel's collaborators have admitted they knew virtually nothing when he recruited them! Many of Archie's super hero characters turned up during the series, some of them absent from comics for decades: the Queen of Diamonds, Bob Phantom, Inferno, the Marvel and the Shield were only the tip of the iceberg, but the story presented each character in a straightforward way so you might assume some of them were appearing for the first time (I myself had no clue the Queen of Diamonds was an existing character until Haspiel mentioned it).

From issues#1-4, the Fox's story sees him being recruited by the Queen of Diamonds to rescue her husband from an evil druid (known as... the Druid). Along the way, the Fox meets and/or fights Bob Phantom, Inferno and the Marvel, surviving perilous situations with nothing more than his athletic prowess and a stubborn refusal to take danger seriously.

Meanwhile, the back-up strip has the present-day Shield narrating a tale to unseen friends about a World War II adventure which pit him against Nazi & Japanese super-soldiers, only for all three men to learn their common enemy was a Lovecraftian monster.

At the end of #4, the two plots merged as the Lovecraftian monster turned into the Druid (maybe not the original intent, but okay) and the Fox was flung back in time to help the Shield and other super-soldiers against him. The plot leads to a finale which Haspiel himself noted is familiar territory for DeMatteis, a "beautiful message for world peace, the very thing I was hoping he could make work without being too preachy." From the top of my head, DeMatteis' conclusion to the tale brings to mind stories he's written for Star Wars and Thor; there have probably been others.

The most compelling idea in DeMatteis' contribution, I found, was a line by the Shield in issue#2 (almost a throw-way until it resurfaces in #5) about how the flag-draped Shield relates to the similarly-garbed Nazi character Master Race and Imperial Japanese champion Hachiman:

"I've read the files on both of you-- Master Race and Hachiman -- Super-powered experiments created by your governments to rain unholy death and destruction in their names!"

"Forgive me for interrupting, Joe-- but... couldn't the two of them have said the same thing about you?"

"They could, Dusty-- and they did. We'd all been expertly programmed to despise the enemy-- reducing him to a subhuman stereotype. After all, when you see your opponent as less than human, it makes it that much easier-- to kill him."

When Captain America is compared against other nationalistic champions, it's only to see how they fall short of Cap (and, by extension, how their nations fall short of the USA); this kind of parity - in World War II, of all times! - is an interesting idea.

It's then I'm reminded DeMatteis wrote some very fine Captain America back in the day (he was the first Cap scribe I ever read - probably made a huge impression on how I view the character) and the Shield is, notably, the (only?) patriotic hero who predates even Cap; judging by the Shield's gray hair in present times, he seems to have lived out the decades since World War II, unlike Cap; DeMatteis seems interested in doing more with the Shield and hopefully he'll get the chance.

In an interview with Waid in the back of issue #4, Waid admits to Haspiel if he had been the plotter, the Fox would have likely been much more grounded and examine ideas about father-son relationships. Which, considering Waid's already telling that story in Green Hornet, I'm glad he left the plotting to Haspiel - they make a great team.

Each issue of the Fox featured 22 pages of story by experienced professionals telling tales with dynamic art, snappy dialogue and neat ideas. All the advertisements were kept to the back pages, special features including scripts, interviews and character biographies expanded on the reading experience, it was bound in a high-quality cover and all cost $3. In an industry where so many books have become joyless, inconsistent, repetitive tales at $4 for 20 pages interrupted by ads and printed on cheap magazine stock... well, if you've had the Fox why would you even bother with the rest? Fortunately, there's more to come from Haspiel and his collaborators!

"...An infernal machine with a worker on either end." Buck Rogers in the 25th Century#1-4

As a publisher, Hermes Press are best known for the collections of reprints they maintain, such as their volumes of Buck Rogers and the Phantom comic strip collections. However, despite their minute experience in telling newly-published tales, I took interest in their recent 4-issue Buck Rogers series because while they may be novices - writer/artist Howard Chaykin has most certainly been around the block a few times.

Most of my knowledge about Buck comes from the 1970s television series, but Chaykin departs from all previous depictions of the character/property, instead propping up the character in a story first-time readers can follow. He doesn't begin the story with Buck's origin as a time-displaced 20th century man, however - it comes up later in the story, but this is not Buck Rogers Begins, to phrase a coin. It's almost a problem to be acquainted with Buck's history - I know enough to recognize Black Barney as a major antagonist from the comic strips, but Chaykin gives him only a minor role before swiftly killing him off.

There's a trend in popular culture when bringing back characters from previous eras to explore how "backward" (for want of a better term) said characters are when set against our "enlightened" present selves; it's cropped up in products like J. Michael Straczynski's the Twelve and Mark Millar's the Ultimates. Buck Rogers is different in that while Buck is a man from the first half of the 20th century, the people he interacts with are from the 25th century - thus, there's no ego to be had in demonstrating how we're more evolved than he.

Rather, the 25th century Chaykin develops has de-evolved! With much of the Earth depopulated, the remaining factions have formed rigid dogmas to demonize outsiders and thus perpetuate their never-ending warfare. In this scenario, the post-WW I Buck Rogers - a man disillusioned by the so-called "Great War" - is uniquely skeptical about prolonging the fighting and seeking to annihilate his supposed "enemies." While Buck can hold his own in a fight, he really wants the war to end; c'est voila: the 20th century man is more enlightened than latter-day folk!

Chaykin's art has reached a point where you know pretty well what to expect; some find his current style distasteful, others will still give him rope. I wasn't too bothered by the art, instead finding myself constantly distracted by the word balloons. Look at the tiny tails in the panel above! How is the reader supposed to tell which character is speaking when the tails are barely visible and don't point to the speaker? Also, issue#4 mistakenly printed one page sans dialogue - oops! Chaykin is game in this series, but the word balloons suggest Hermes Press are still figuring out how this "comic book" thing works.

Still, Hermes presents the tale uninterrupted by ads and the back material includes an interview with Chaykin, sketches, pin-ups and scripts - pretty good value, all told.

Review: Weird Tales, January 1949

In addition to my aforementioned work on comic strips leading me to delve into Captain Easy and Alley Oop, I've also spent some time admiring our library's collection of pulp magazines. Then, inspiration struck me: could I afford to own a few pulps? A quick check of prices online confirmed: if all I want is a reading copy, yes I can. Thus, I picked up three issues of Weird Tales which I'll blog about here as I finish them.

The January, 1949 issue of Weird Tales features these stories:

"Four From Jehlam" by Allison V. Harding leads things off with a fairly typical story; four men have their deaths prophesied by an old woman and the story goes about the business of their deaths without too many surprises. The manner of their deaths come as a surprise to the victims (the one supposed to drown doesn't fall in the ocean but rather has a build-up of fluid in his lungs), but once the reader figures out these are "ironic" deaths, it's not very interesting going through the motions.

"Food for Demons" by E. Everett Evans involves a professor who conjures up a demon which possesses his body and uses him to feed on others (it consumes intellect and feasts on highly intelligent people); the great bother with this story is the professor's love interest helps save him and guide the demon toward old men (rather than the young) to feed on, but why does this professor deserve a happy ending? Surely those who tamper in the Devil's domain have earned a horrific ending? Not in this instance.

"The Thirteenth Floor" by Frank Gruber is one of roughly four million stories about phantom "thirteenth floors," usually titled "the Thirteenth Floor." This one is set in a department store where a man makes a date with a clerk on the 13th floor, then when he's stood up finds out there is no 13th floor; like many of the stories in this pulp it follows a route plot, but the prose has pep.

"Open Season on the -Bottoms" by Snowden T. Herrick. Here's a frustrating one - it explains an odd mystery about people whose surnames end with "bottom" each disappearing but the tale seems to run out of space and never fulfills on this unusual premise. Boy, Nelson S. Bond could have made hay with this one!

"The Great Stone Death" by John D. MacDonald. A man finds a giant monster living amongst the rocks unnoticed because it seems to be like a rock itself. It opens with fairly Lovecraftian ideas about old things slumbering, but this particular monster turns out to be quite vulnerable.

"Lover in Scarlet" by Harold Lawlor. Another familiar story type, the old "expectant heir tries to force his uncle to an early grave, only to meet an ironic fate." At least it's brief.

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Robert Bloch. Now here's the reason I bought this issue! This tale is well-known in Bloch's canon because of the notorious Alfred Hitchcock Presents adaptation; it concerns a simple-minded young man serving a stage magician; all too-easily made to believe in magic and unable to discern which people are trustworthy, it leads to a gruesome finish when he tries to saw a woman in half. This is much stronger in its original form than the TV adaptation - Bloch tells the story from the killer's perspective, which works very well - albeit, I wondered how someone with such a rough grasp of spoken English could faithfully reproduce the proper English read by other characters.

"The Big Shot" by Eric Frank Russell. A tough gangster dies and has to face the afterlife. It doesn't have much to say about the afterlife, it's more of a character study.

"Balu" by Stephen Grendon (aka August Derleth) concerns a boy and his cat, the titular Balu. Being an Egyptian cat, naturally Balu bears a terrible supernatural side.

"The Bonan of Baladewa" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman tells of soldiers stationed in Java during World War II and the commanding officer who despises the locals, crosses the line by killing one and meets with supernatural justice. Again, a pretty familiar tale.

Finally, "Our Fair City" by Robert A. Heinlein offers something quite unusual - a wind which is to all appearances sentient and can carry papers aloft for up to 50 years; when a newspaperman learns of this, he begins writing stories about the wind ("Kitten") and using it against his political enemies. It's definitely not "typical" or "route!"

There were also two poems: "A Curse" by Page Cooper and "The Heads on Easter Island" by Leah Bodine Drake. Both were designed just to fill space in the magazine and they do that part admirably.

It's easy to see why the names of Roberts Bloch & Heinlein live on while the others have mostly faded away (Derleth endures for appropriating Lovecraft later in his career). Most of the stories are too familiar - they don't shock, surprise or amaze.

On to the next issue!