"...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!

Who was harmed the most by Steve Ditko's Speedball? Besides we readers, I mean.

A recent comment on the internet on the subject of comic book creators not deserving more than what their original contracts stipulated (presented anonymously):

"The thing is this. Steve Ditko is not coming out anytime soon looking for that Speedball money. He also is not going to pay Marvel back for the money lost printing that terrible book. It was not his risk, it was Marvels."

Let's unpack this statement, shall we?

First, there's the assumption Marvel "lost" money on Steve Ditko's Speedball, which published 10 issues between 1988-1989 before cancellation; Marvel was left holding several unpublished stories at the time of cancellation but gradually printed them via avenues such as Marvel Comics Presents and Marvel Super-Heroes.

It's hard for Marvel to lose money printing comics. Not impossible, but hard. Because they deal to the direct market and do not accept returns, overprinting is (by design) a diminished problem. There's also the voodoo involved in how much the book costs to produce; I worked on a series for Marvel which at one time sold 5K per month (direct market) and heard from my editor the book was "too profitable" to be cancelled.

The true risk-takers were the direct market retailers who - based on past performance - judged how many copies they could sell of a Marvel Comics-published Steve Ditko super hero comic and were then (evidently) proved wrong. Certainly the copious amounts of Speedball issues in bargain bins across North America speaks to their folly.

But ultimately how did this harm Marvel? Yes, for a time they had stories in inventory which they had paid for but couldn't recoup costs through printing. However, they had also wound up with a new IP - the character of Speedball. One year after his own book's cancellation, Speedball leaped into the pages of Fabian Nicieza & Mark Bagley's New Warriors, bearing a new personality which made him a fan-favourite and helped make this latter series a big new property for the company. Further, the renewed interest in Speedball enabled Marvel to print the remaining inventory issues without being burned at the stake by the comics community. To this day, Speedball remains a useful character in their IP farm.

So, the intellectual property "Speedball" endured beyond his failed series. Were retailers so upset by Speedball that they avoided supporting new Marvel properties? Hardly! New Warriors was one of several "Heroes for the 90s" properties Marvel sold to retailers and, with the rising speculator boom, retailers simply increased the amount they were ordering from Marvel.

If the retailers blamed anyone over Speedball - well, the buck doesn't stop with the corporation, it stops with Steve Ditko. I can well believe the series' failure damaged retailers' confidence in ordering new properties from Ditko's hand. His involvement with the now-successful Speedball property ended when the last inventory story saw print. So who, if anyone, should Ditko apologize to? Probably himself.

Publishers do take risks with new material, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking the creators aren't also taking risks. Their reputations are on the line with every job, as the career of Herb Trimpe bears witness. They have to somehow keep work flowing steadily, usually without the benefit of talent agents or business managers. As Kurt Busiek has often observed, freelance comic creators are in business for themselves and it's tough to come up with the capital to run your career like a business when the work only pays you hand-to-mouth.

Now, in the case of something like Clive Barker's Razorline comics for Marvel - an expensive series of titles which flopped hard - there, Marvel would be holding the short end of the stick; after the dust cleared, they didn't even own the Razorline characters so they couldn't write the initiative off as "creative development." Creator-owned books are a much bigger risk to the publishers.

Therefore, change the above internet comment to invoke Barker and Razorline and the statement is fixed. You're welcome, internet!

"Dadgum them pesky Greeks!" Looking at Alley Oop

Working on the university's comic art collection I've been fortunate enough to discover many classic comic strips for the first time; earlier I referred to my discovery of Captain Easy - and another fantastic strip was Alley Oop. Thanks to IDW's Library of American Comics series, there's finally a new and affordable volume of the Alley Oop strip!

Rather than cover the entire history of the strip, IDW published this item as a single volume of their "Essentials" series. As the cover declares, this is "the first time travel adventure," and spans strips from March 6, 1939 to March 23, 1940. It enters mid-story and exits mid-story because strips of the time tended to follow long, sprawling arcs - the strips featured here give some of the background leading into the time travel element. A thorough introduction gives the background of this unusual strip and its creator, V.T. Hamlin.

Alley Oop (which is still published today) told the story of a rough-and-tough caveman in his fanciful, humourous prehistoric adventures. In 1939, Hamlin decided to bring Oop (and girlfriend Ooola) into contemporary times, setting off a series of misadventures as Oop lumbers around the modern world, picking fights with trains and bulls. Before this can ever be exhausted, Oop sets off on another time travel adventure, winding up in Troy just in time to defend the besieged city from "them pesky Greeks."

Most of the humour in Alley Oop is anachronistic: Oop uses modern slang, the mythical Sirens summon victims with swing music, the time travellers bring items such as motorboats, tommyguns and a station wagon into Homer's Iliad - all good fun.

The stories are not only told with great humour, but fine art; Hamlin's storytelling is clear and simple (often conveying plots with just 3-4 panels per day), yet full of neat details and imagery (such as above where Oop throws a spear the wrong way). The only pity is IDW have chosen solely this volume for their library; if a complete Alley Oop is ever undertaken, or even if they pick up where this book ends, I'd be most pleased.

Some thoughts on the "boy meets girl" conflict

Recently I watched the 1934 film I've Got Your Number by director Ray Enright and it got me thinking about the "boy meets girl" stories told in films.

In this film, Terry (Pat O'Brien) and John (Allen Jenkins) are telephone repairmen who are constantly raising the ire of their boss Mr. Flood (Eugene Pallette). John does virtually all of the work while Terry romances and/or verbally spars with the variety of beautiful women they encounter at almost every job. Terry only really proves his worth when thrust into dangerous situations, such as when he has to cut the power lines on a building during a fire. The story truly gets underway when Terry and John are sent to test the telephone connection at a hotel where Marie (Joan Blondell) works on the local switchboard. While John does the work, Terry flirts with Marie, but Marie isn't interested.

Now, here's where I had some issues with the film, but in order to explain why I don't think the "boy meets girl" comedy elements work here, I'll have to compare two other movies where - under somewhat similar circumstances - the elements do work. First, Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940):

In this film, newpaper editor Walter (Cary Grant) desperately wants to force reporter Hildy (Rosalind Russell) to both return to his employ and marry him. To accomplish this, Walter is willing to resort to many underhanded tricks, primarily focusing on Hildy's all-too-earnest beau Bruce (Ralph Bellamy), who repeatedly winds up in trouble with the law. However, Walter's winning move is to involve Hildy in the plight of Earl Williams; she wants the story badly and as the plot progresses, we see she not only matches Walter in their verbal sparring, but in sheer tenacity; she and Walter truly are equals, unlike the mismatched Bruce.

Then, Howard Hawks' Bringing up Baby (1938):

Flighty heiress Susan (Katherine Hepburn) repeatedly causes trouble for David (Cary Grant), initially through a series of accidents. Later, she grows fond of David and begins deliberately causing trouble to involve him with, or placing him into situations where he has no choice but to help her out; after a very trying ordeal, David ultimately realizes he loves Susan in spite of it all.

Now, back to I've Got Your Number:

In their first encounter when Marie spurns Terry, he reacts by taking apart her switchboard from the back; crouched behind the board he can fiddle with the machine without Marie seeing him and begins sending her calls requesting a date (which she repeatedly refuses) and pushes her jack out of the board so she can't receive other people's calls. This is childish behaviour, but somewhat playful - and anyway, it does nothing to endear him to Marie. The larger issue, I think, is whether Terry is endearing to the audience.

Subsequently, Marie is at home, cooking dinner. Her phone begins ringing, but no one is on the other end. Since When a Stranger Calls won't be filmed for another 40 years, Marie assumes her phone is out of order; she runs downstairs and uses a pay phone to request a repairman. She's only back in her apartment for a minute before Terry appears at the door. Marie instantly realizes Terry is behind her problem, but again brushes off his request for a date as she lets him in to fix the phone. Terry proceeds to bother her as she tries to finish fixing dinner. When the food is finally on the table, Terry walks over and flips the table upside-down. Noting her dinner is ruined, he observes she has no reason to refuse his date. She finally agrees.

I think this is possibly the worst "boy meets girl" scenario I've seen in a 1930s film. How is this romantic? How is this funny? For all the manipulations of Walter in His Girl Friday, he remains charming - and reserves his worst behaviour for put-upon Bruce; he and Hildy have undeniable chemistry throughout. In Bringing up Baby, when Susan deliberately ruins David's life (for instance, sending his clothes out to be cleaned, forcing him to wear two different humiliating outfits in a row), it's demeaning, but stops short of being crude. Terry loafing on the job while he interferes with Marie's job - then stalking her - then flipping over a table to get his way - it's not endearing, funny or romantic. It's boorish and petulent.

Perhaps Terry's behaviour in I've Got Your Number could be seen as someone who knows a lot about romance from books and movies, but can't determine how to act that material out in the real world; like Susan's belief in Bringing Up Baby that David's problems with her stem from romantic attraction, Terry behaves as though Marie's refusal to date him masks a genuine attraction; it doesn't seem to occur to him (or the director, actor or screenwriter) that perhaps he's simply a loathsome human being. Heck, if anyone in real life tried to keep up the type of 24-hour insanity Susan and Walter provoked in their movies, they'd appear much less likeable than the characters who inspired them.

So, I guess I'm saying I've Got Your Number is not a lost classic. You could use the same title and setup for a slick serial killer film, though. At the very least, it's not as terrible as Men Are Such Fools).

Unearthed: Bogie by Claude-Jean Philippe & Patrick Lesueur

One curious aspect in the world of comic books is how much attention we devote to what has been; certainly when it comes to genre material, there are copious indexes, reviews and assorted appreciations found in texts and websites; if the genre material is published by one of the leading publishers, the likelihood of you easily finding material about it increases substantially. But what of non-genre works? Especially genre works which were printed through a self-publisher or defunct publishing entity? That's where you have to perform a little detective work - and since I occasionally run this blog feature "Unearthed," it's safe to assume I enjoy digging up forgotten comics.

In this instance, take the book Bogie. The only information I had about this 1989 Eclipse publication's contents were "biography of Humphrey Bogart." I didn't even know whether or not it was a graphic novel until it landed in my hands! Even then, there's nothing to be found in the item itself which explains what you're about to read or how it came to be; the creators are credited on the front and back cover (in the latter, the artist's name is misspelled) but there is no introduction, no blurbs, nada.

Very small text opposite the title page indicate it was originally published in 1984 in French and had been translated into English for this 1989 printing. So who is author Claude-Jean Philippe (his hyphen is frequently misused) or artist Patrick Lesueur? Why did they feel compelled to compose a biography of actor Humphrey Bogart using the medium of comics? How did Eclipse become interested in republishing the material? Blamed if I know. Retailers must have had fun selling this book back in the day; Res ipsa loquitur.

What we have here is a a French filmmaker (Philippe) whose interest in Bogart's career somehow led to he and Lesueur relating Bogart's story in a way they found meaningful. Having no access to the original French version, I have to assume this translated version is accurate to what they intended.

Thus: Bogie tells the story of Humphrey Bogart in Bogart's own voice. Bogart seemingly narrates this story from beyond the grave. Although the tale leads the readers through his life from start to finish, it's primarily concerned with his career as an actor; some of his childhood and personal relationships make it in, but the story is a celebration of Bogart's cinema career, taking time to visit many of the notable pictures Bogart appeared in (not just the obvious ones, but titles like the Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse and Sahara also make the cut). I'm not certain where the authors' sources on Bogart's life story came from; I've heard it said the tale of Bogart's lip being scarred by an escaped prisoner was a fiction, but Bogie presents it as fact - or, perhaps, as the anecdote originated from Bogart and he's the narrator of this biography, he would naturally keep it in.

Patrick Lusueur's art shows tremendous photorealistic detail, appropriate to the work. Many scenes from Bogart's films are presented on the pages; it could have almost been assembled as a fumetti, but Lusueur adds distinctive touches (notably an infant Bogart depicted with fedora & lit cigarette) to break from reality.

Having recently read Eric Lax's biography Bogart, it's a nice refresher to revisit some of the same material, but through very visual means. There's also a little bit of content found here which links Bogart back to the creators' France. At only 56 pages it's a slim number, but as someone with an interest in the cinema of Humphrey Bogart and the medium of comics, Bogie is the point at which those two graph lines meet. It's a fun little number.

Warner Bros. remakes; the rise of Bogart, the fall of Raft

I've blogged before about my interest in viewing Humphrey Bogart's filmography; as I delved through those films, it soon gave way to a general interest in the output of the Warner Bros - especially their 1930s pictures. At one early point in the Bogart-athon, I viewed Kid Galahad (1937) by director Michael Curtiz.

In this film, a boxing promoter (Edward G. Robinson) takes a novice fighter (Wayne Morris) under his wing, but gradually turns against his protegee after finding out he's in love with his younger sister (Bette Davis). After suffering a change of heart, the promoter is killed by a gangster (Humphrey Bogart) while shielding his fighter.

Many weeks later, I began watching Bogart in the Wagons Roll at Night (1941), directed by Ray Enright and found it... strangely familiar!

In this picture, a circus owner (Humphrey Bogart) takes a novice lion tamer (Eddie Albert) under his wing, but gradually turns against his protegee after finding out he's in love with his younger sister (Joan Leslie). After suffering a change of heart, the circus owner is killed by a lion (played by itself) while shielding the lion tamer.

Why, here I'd come across two films featuring Bogart and identical plots! As I learned more about Warner Bros., I discovered they were notorious for recycling their scripts (it seems especially from the late 30s to early 40s). This latter film proved to be the end of Bogart's career doldrums (as most of his career at Warner had been up until then), falling right between two of his star-making features: High Sierra and the Maltese Falcon.

This is not the only time Bogart had been plugged to fill a role in a Warner Bros. remake - many of his pictures were hand-me-downs, such as King of the Underworld (1939) where he took over the part played by Paul Muni (then Warner's top male star) in Dr. Socrates (1935). This case is unusual, however, in that Bogart went from the tertiary part of the gangster in Kid Galahad to the primary role of the circus owner in the Wagons Roll at Night. And yet, everything about the Wagons Roll at Night points to it being an inferior picture, as so many of the remakes were. Ray Enright had been a steady hand at Warner, but he wasn't exactly Michael Curtiz! Joan Leslie & Eddie Albert were just beginning their acting careers - hardly veteran stars such as Robinson & Davis in the earlier picture. If Bogart had been given Robinson's part in Kid Galahad, it would have been a huge career-booster - but taking the lead role in the remake kept him at the b-movie level.

These films aren't the ones I truly want to talk about, however. A few weeks ago, I watched Howard Hawks' Warner Bros. picture Tiger Shark (1932).

A Portuguese fisherman (Edward G. Robinson) is nearly killed by sharks while saving his best friend (Richard Arlen). After another fisherman dies, Robinson tends to the man's daughter (Zita Johann), eventually convincing her to marry him for protection even though she admits she doesn't love him. The real trouble begins when Robinson's wife falls for Robinson's friend, precipitating a tragic finale.

This past week, I tuned into Raoul Walsh's Warner picture Manpower (1941).

A power line operator (Edward G. Robinson) is nearly electrocuted while saving his best friend (George Raft). After another operator dies, Robinson tends to the man's daughter (Marlene Dietrich), eventually convincing her to marry him for protection even though she admits she doesn't love him. The real trouble begins when Robinson's wife falls for Robinson's friend, precipitating a tragic finale.

Once again we have identical plots and a shared actor (Robinson). However, Robinson plays the same role in both pictures, changing only his character's ethnicity and occupation. Both films are also gifted with top Warner directors (Hawks & Walsh). The latter film also has an improved supporting cast, with George Raft (a top Warner star), Marlene Dietrich (something of a has-been by 1941, but always popular) and great Warner stock players such as Alan Hale and Frank McHugh.

Where Manpower fascinates me is the casting of its third-billed player: George Raft. This picture came out during a series of poorly-judged career decisions Raft made; essentially, Walsh's They Drive by Night (1940) served as Raft's last truly fine picture for Warner Bros. Up until this time, Raft was considered a bigger star than Bogart, but Manpower seemed to be his fall from grace - and not only because he'd been given third-billing.

There are well-circulated anecdotes relating how Raft passed up High Sierra to Bogart because Bogart tricked him into thinking it was just another gangster picture. The two stars are also entangled in the mess surrounding Manpower and the Maltese Falcon. Bogart was cast in Manpower while Raft was sought for the Maltese Falcon, yet - in possibly his single greatest blunder - Raft refused to appear in the Maltese Falcon because John Huston was a first-time director (whereas Walsh was a veteran Raft had worked with before - albeit, Walsh found him an extremely difficult actor). At the same time, Raft demanded Bogart be flung out of Manpower; the Warners complied and cast Edward G. Robinson instead - an actor who commanded a higher billing than either Bogart or Raft. Therefore, Bogart had been made free to appear in the Maltese Falcon and Raft gave up top-billing in what proved to be one of the finest, most influential and best-remembered pictures of the 1940s so he could take third-billing in a quickly-forgotten remake.

And yet, the Maltese Falcon itself was another remake, the Warners having produced it in 1931 & 1936 (the latter instance as Satan Met a Lady). The difference Huston brought to this third attempt was to seek closer fidelity with the source material, rather than tricking audiences into thinking they were seeing new material (as was the case with Manpower). On the face of it, Raft had chosen between two remakes with no reason to suspect either one would be talked about 70+ years later.

I can only imagine why Raft made such a stink about Manpower; he didn't work well with Walsh, he openly fought with (and disparaged) Robinson... perhaps he really wanted to work with Dietrich? Or perhaps having missed out on Walsh's High Sierra and seen how it benefited Bogart's career he didn't want to risk passing up Walsh's next picture?

The Warners' top five male stars were said to be Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, George Raft & Humphrey Bogart. Bogart is considered one of the most legendary actors to ever live; Cagney is a Hollywood legend as well; Robinson is still remembered; Muni and Raft have been consigned to the dustbins of history, recollected only by aficionados (such as I).

Suppose Raft had taken the part of Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon - would it have enlivened his career? Or would his performance have tarnished the picture? One can certainly understand why the Warners would have wanted him to be their star - he'd already appeared in another adaptation of author Dashiell Hammett's work in the Glass Key (1935) for Paramount. If Raft had starred in another Hammett adaptation perhaps we'd have Dashiell Hammett/George Raft themed DVD box sets on Amazon today.

Ultimately, how did I find Manpower? Eh. Tiger Shark proved to be the more interesting picture, albeit not as interesting as the poster I inserted above makes it seem. Manpower has an extremely oddly-cast Dietrich behaving as an average Warner supporting lady (the type of character Ann Sheridan usually played), which is kind of fascinating on its own. And Robinson? Heck, he's always good. Pity about Raft...