Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at 35

I didn't get to see Indiana Jones at the Temple of Doom on opening day because of school. And my parents.

Back in 1984, I was finishing my freshman year of high school. It was Finals Week. Some of my friends were going to see the movie opening day. My parents said no. It wasn't a full no. It was a no until after finals. I grumbled, knowing I wouldn't be able to see it opening day. But I ended up seeing it.

As a youth, I loved it. It was an Indiana Jones file. What's not to love? Temple of Doom was different than Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not bad. Different. I loved seeing Short Round, a few years younger than my fifteen-year-old self. The love interest, Willie Scott, was not Marion Ravenwood. The music was fantastic. And seeing Indy/Harrison Ford react to the blood of Kali was pretty gripping stuff.

Over the years, I've rarely rewatched Temple of Doom. Once Last Crusade came out, it eclipsed the second movie in my list. Then, when Crystal Skull was released, Temple of Doom was no longer the "worst" Indy film. That's a misnomer. Temple of Doom was never the worst. It was just third in a great trilogy of films.

Now that we've had the 35th anniversary, I felt it was long past time to revisit the movie. I've got a lot more years in me--and a many more stories--so I was able to appreciate Temple of Doom on its own.

The 2019 Verdict

And I really enjoyed it. Yes, it is definitely different in tone, but that's what Lucas and Spielberg wanted. They wanted the darker sequel/prequel to the bright first entry. Granted, Raiders was plenty dark. The vibe Lucas and Spielberg seemed to be going for was the scary adventures of the pulp magazines of the 1930s. I've read and studied much about the pulps by now, and I can easily see they got what they wanted.

I also appreciated Indy's choices in the movie. For all of his heroics in Raiders, he was on a mission for someone else. Well, something else: the US government. In Temple of Doom, Indy is out for himself. He's figured out the missing sacred rock of the village is one of the Shakara Stones. "Fortune and glory" is what prompts him on the journey, but the missing children is what grips his heart.

This is the first time I've watched this movie as a dad. I viscerally felt the anguish of the parents this time. What if some ancient evil took all the children? What if it took my child? What would I do?

What Indy did. His utterance of "All of us" right as he starts the children revolt is striking. Always was, but when you're a fifteen year old, you don't get it as much as you do when you're fifty.

Which made the reunion of the kids with the parents so much better this time. I know all those folks were actors but dang, did the emotions come during that scene. Well done.

I noticed how Ford lightened up Indy a little bit. Despite the darkness of the film, Indy himself is mostly light, especially with the interplay between him and Willie and him and Short Round. I'm sure Ford shaped the character in this manner, and I enjoyed it.

The music! 

I haven't heard this music in a long time, but I was humming it all the time after the re-watch. "Short Round's Theme" and "Mine Car Chase" are as great as always, but "Slave Children Crusade" was extra special this time. 

And I didn't even mind Willie's screaming all the time.

In all, I again thoroughly enjoyed re-watching Temple of Doom.  And no: I cannot believe it has been thirty-five years!

With the Temple of Doom anniversary and Last Crusade anniversary (30, all part of the magnificent Summer of '89 at the movies), I think you know what's coming next.

Free Comic Book Day 2019: The Haul

I spent the bulk of my selections of free comic books selecting things I'd never heard of except for the DC comics ones. But the two stores I went to in Houston--The Pop Culture Company and Bedrock City-- also yielded some interesting finds.

Probably the most fun comic was a Shazam 100-page giant. What great timing considering I just had a Shazam-themed month of posts.

I've heard good things about Denny O'Neil's run of The Question, and I picked up volume 1.

I love Hard Case Crime but have never read one of their comics. Now I have one.

Finally, a pair of books devoted to pulp fiction. One is Don Hutchison's book about pulp heroes while the second is a book called THE PULPS, published in 1970. Here, author Tony Goodstone actually read hundreds of pulps magazine and selected some representative samples. Looking forward to seeing what a guy in 1970 thought was a good sample.

So, what issues did you buy yesterday?

A Thriller with a Historical Twist: The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer

Sometimes, a little known fact in history can spark an entire story.

THE ESCAPE ARTIST is the latest novel by Meltzer, a man who has a healthy respect, understanding, and love of history. If you haven’t read any of his books, you might know him from his TV shows “Decoded” and “Lost History.” He first came onto my radar when he wrote “Identity Crisis” for DC Comics, a graphic novel that shows actual death in the DC Universe and how it affects the characters. The ending of that story reverberated through the comics for years after, and it’s still unnerving. I read his Culper Ring Series featuring Beecher White, an archivist at the National Archives. Any author who can make an archivist a hero is a good writer. I earned two degrees in history and while I may have soured on the political aspects of being a professional historian, I still retain the passion. It’s a passion Meltzer shares and it’s why I enjoy his novels. And don’t’ even get me started on his awesome series of kids’ books focusing on heroes for his son and his daughter.

In the weeks leading up to the book’s release, Meltzer’s excitement for THE ESCAPE ARTIST was palpable. His social media and his newsletter was filled with anticipation that we would soon meet Nola Brown. She is one of the two protagonists in the new book. Taking a page from lost history, Meltzer made Nola the official painter of the US military. Ever since World War I, the military have hired a painter to capture things a photograph cannot: the anguish of war and what it really means. She doesn’t show up for a little while in the book, but her presence does.

The opening chapter shows a military plane taking off from somewhere in Alaska. Soon thereafter, it crashes, but not before the unnamed female character has a chance  to write a last message. The message is received by the other protagonist, Jim “Zig” Zigarowski, a mortician who works at Dover Air Force Base. This base is where all our fallen soldiers arrive after they die in service to our country. Zig and the other morticians help to give families closure by fixing up the dead. When the name “Nola Brown” comes across the big board, Zig personally takes it upon himself to work on her corpse. You see, Nola helped saved the life of Zig’s daughter back when they were Girl Scouts. It doesn’t matter that his daughter died a year after that; Nola gave Zig the extra time, and for that, he’ll pay the debt. But the woman identified as Nola Brown is, in fact, not Nola at all. Zig would know because of a particular physical mark on the real Nola. This unidentified woman’s identity is specifically being targeted so as to wipe away Nola’s existence. What gives Zig even more pause is the note he finds in the most unlikely of places: on a piece of paper in the dead woman’s stomach.  You see, if a person wanted to pass along a message in the seconds before a disaster strikes (like a plane crash), the person can write a note and swallow it. The stomach acids will preserve the paper and the message. It happened in real life on 9/11with one of the people on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Meltzer took that unknown piece of history and wove it into a spectacular story.

The narrative is divided into two main POVs: that of Zig and Nola. Often, we get “This is Nola at age sixteen” or “This is Nola at age ten” segments where a particular moment of his life is revealed, giving us a greater understanding of what makes her tick. I listened to the audio with my favorite narrator, Scott Brick, is teamed up with January LaVoy who reads Nola’s parts. The combination is fantastic.

As is the story. There are too many layers to note here without spoiling the fun of this book. In January, I discovered THE SHADOW novels from the 1930s and thoroughly devoured all that were available on Audible. Now, I’ve moved on to the reprints in my library. In breathless prose, Meltzer’s writing is clean and precise as always, delivering a bonanza of excitement that would have been right at home in the heyday of pulp fiction, with a heroine who can stand alongside The Shadow himself.

The Shadow: The Black Falcon

THE BLACK FALCON is not only the fourth Shadow novel I’ve read in 2018 but my fourth one overall. And, to date, it might be my favorite for all the action, mystery, and zeal of the storytelling.

As the story opens, Rowdy Kershing is at a poker game amongst his criminal brethren. When he loses his winnings, he needs to buy more chips. He does so with a fat wad of money he makes sure all around him see. What he hides is the presence of a falcon’s feather, dyed black. For Rowdy has been assigned a task: recruit some “gorillas” to be of service to the super criminal, The Black Falcon, who has already kidnapped one millionaire and taunts the police that he’ll do it again.

But as gruff a talker as Rowdy is, he pales when the Knight of Darkness enters the room. They all do. Action ensues and Rowdy squeals like a rat.

The next set piece is the preparations the police deployed to protect Elias Carthers, the next millionaire on The Black Falcon’s list. This is a great action sequence mainly for how it plays out and the clues it reveals. I know that in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, authors frequently left clues for the readers to draw their own conclusions. Pulp fiction was not too known for that, but the clues in this sequence are plain to see.

It is after these scenes where The Shadow, in disguise as millionaire Lamont Cranston, takes action not in Shadow garb. Again, I’m too new at reading these stories to know if this is normal or special, but I’m guessing it’s likely normal, seeing as how The Shadow inserts himself as Cranston into the action.

And by poking his nose into the action gets Cranston in hot water. You see, he’s a millionaire and he walks directly into the clutches of The Black Falcon. From here to the end, the action is fantastic, the revelations are eye-opening, and the ending is outstanding in a “how will he get out of this” manner.
Perhaps the reason I like this one so much is the similarities to the villains of Batman. The Joker or The Riddler rarely commit their crimes without letting everyone know ahead of time, and The Black Falcon is right in that wheelhouse. Surprisingly, the Falcon makes some deductions of his own, and that got me to worrying for The Shadow’s safety. This novel is from February 1934 so I needn’t have worried. There was still going to be another fifteen years of stories, but still.

At one point, The Shadow reveals his true face to another character…and author Walter Gibson doesn’t describe the face! He only describes the reactions of the other character. I found that simultaneously great and frustrating. Who really is The Shadow? And what must his visage look like to bring such dread?

Of the new productions by Audible, THE BLACK FALCON is not a full-cast recording but a single narrator. Thankfully, it’s the same narrator as the full-cast versions so there is continuity.
For those of y’all who have never read a Shadow novel, here is a good one with which to start. It’s got all the pieces in place for a rip-roaring pulp adventure tale.

Partners in Peril
The Shadow Unmasks
The Romanoff Jewels

The Shadow: The Romanoff Jewels

In the third Shadow novel I’ve read (actually heard; thanks Audible!), THE ROMANOFF JEWELS begins in the apartment full of wealthy men. Author Maxwell Grant (Walter Gibson) tells the reader who they are and why they’re there. One of those men is Lamont Cranston, otherwise known as…The Shadow.

Another one of those gentlemen is Marcus Holtmann. Unpretentious, Holtmann has a secret buried deep in his brain, a secret other men desperately want. You see, a friend of Holtmann’s casually let slip the hiding place of the Romanoff jewels, the very jewels seized by the Bolsheviks in 1917 when they overthrew—and murdered—Czar Nicholas II and his family. Priceless in value, nefarious men want to steal the jewels and return the czars to power. To bring out his knowledge, Holtmann is kidnapped and tortured by the insidious Michael Senov for the information.

Naturally the Shadow deduces Holtmann’s whereabouts and does his best to save the man’s life. But he was a few minutes too late. Holtmann was poisoned! With his dying breaths, Holtmann relates to The Shadow all that he divulged to Senov. Armed with that knowledge, The Shadow races across the Atlantic to thwart the attempt.

I won’t give away the ending here, but I’ll just say that a piece of information The Shadow relates I didn’t see coming…but it makes all the sense in the world.

This being only my third Shadow novel, I don’t know how prevalent it was for the Knight of Darkness to travel outside the confines of New York or even America, but I appreciated how, to the European adversaries he encountered, The Shadow was a complete unknown. At least the gangsters in The Big Apple are smart enough about The Shadow to be scared. In addition, I liked how The Shadow got injured at one point, so badly that he needed to be nursed back to health, once again proving he is simply a man.

Which leads to a question I hope long-time fans of The Shadow can answer: is there ever a novel in which author Walter Gibson relates The Shadow’s training?

I’m not sure what criteria Audible used to choose which Shadow novels they produced, but I think him traveling abroad might be high on the list. Or the great ending. PARTNERS IN PERIL is a good one because of how it was used in the first Batman story. THE SHADOW UNMASKS was a natural choice that The Shadow’s origin was reveal. THE ROMANOFF JEWELS not only had foreign travel but the revelation of a key aspect of The Shadow’s legacy.

I am thoroughly enjoying these books. Next up: THE BLACK FALCON.

Eighty-five Years of Doc Savage

Eighty-five years ago today, Doc Savage landed on magazine shelves for the first time and, one might argue, helped change popular culture all the way up to the present day.

The brainchild of Street and Smith publisher, Henry Ralston and editor John Nanovic, Doc Savage was the brighter answer to the magazine’s other runaway bestseller, The Shadow. But where the Knight of Darkness fought crime at night and in the, um, shadows, The Man of Bronze was a different type of hero. He strove “every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do. Let me do right to all, and wrong no man.” He was a paragon of virtue, the kind of person kids could look up to and revere.

Clark Savage, Jr. appeared in 181 adventures from 1933 to 1949, mostly written by a single author, Lester Dent. In nearly all of them, he was accompanied by his five stalwart brothers in arms: Monk Mayfair, Ham Brooks, John Renwick, Long Tom Roberts, and William Littlejohn. Each man of the Fabulous Five was an expert in his chosen discipline, but Doc bested each. Doc had trained his mind and body since birth to be a superman. He even had a Fortress of Solitude where he would retire from time to time to study. Invariably he would emerge from his seclusion with some new invention, knowledge, or something else to benefit humankind. His headquarters on the 86th Floor of the unnamed building in New York (but we all knew was the Empire State Building) was a palace of gadgets, technology, and books where Doc and his comrades planned their adventures. And his villains were trying to take over the world long before Lex Luther or Blofeld.

If you’ve read this far, I think you will recognize some names and terms. The obvious descendant is Superman himself. Extrapolate, if you will, what Superman wrought: Batman, DC Comics, other superheroes, Marvel Comics, novels, toys, merchandise, movie serials, major motion pictures with superheroes, and many other things that shape large chunks of popular culture. In fact, the biggest superhero movie to date, The Avengers: Infinity War, can trace its roots all the way back to a pulp magazine character that debuted eight-five years ago today.

I am woefully deficient in my Doc Savage reading, but then just imagine reading one novel a month at the pace Lester Dent and a handful of other co-writers drafted the books. You would finish in 2034! But these stories are fantastic to dip into from time to time for the breathless sense of adventure and wonder.

Generations of readers grew up on the original pulp magazines while other generations were raised on the Bantam reprints of the 1960s and 1970s, with Frank Bama's depiction of Doc with a widow's peak and a tattered shirt.

Nostalgia Ventures reprinted the entire run, adding historical commentary. And Will Murray has been using abandoned outlines from Dent’s personal papers to write new adventures, including one in which Doc teams up with The Shadow, bringing the entire saga full circle.

Now, in this 85th year of Doc Savage, I plan to read a few more adventures, including the black-and-white comics from the mid 70s as published by Marvel Comics. I'll be reviewing these yarns as I get to them, beginning with The Polar Treasure next week. 

What are your favorite Doc Savage stories? How about a Top 10 list?

The Shadow: The Shadow Unmasks

Hot on the heels of my first Shadow novel, PARTNERS IN PERIL, I have now read my second, THE SHADOW UNMASKS. And I loved it just as much.

In order to kick start my Shadow experience, I decided to listen to the new productions at Audible Studios. They feature a main narrator and multiple voice actors for the cast. Both I’ve heard are fantastic and recommended. As a result, however, I’m reading these Shadow novels out of order, which means what I learned in UNMASKS surprised me.

Up until now, I’ve always thought The Shadow was, in fact, Lamont Cranston. If my memory serves me, that simple one-to-one equation was on the radio shows and it certainly was on the Alec Baldwin movie. As I started in with UNMASKS, I was expecting the same, and it started out that way until the story took an interesting turn.

The main plot of UNMASKS involves a crook named Shark Meglo (great name!). He and his gang have a straightforward plan: find, attack, and kill the buyers of some rare and valuable gems before the buyer can utter the name of the seller. For you see, the master crook behind the entire operation recycles the gems in new settings. Every three weeks or so a new member of the wealthy class dies. All of them had recently purchased gems.

Naturally, the story begins with the most recent murder. The Shadow tries to thwart Shark’s evil plans…but fails. He learns vital clues to what’s going on, however, information needed to prevent the next death. But a distant accident lands on the front pages of New York’s newspapers. A plane accident in England injured a few Americans. The story not only listed the names of the individuals but splashes their photos. There, for all to see, is the real Lamont Cranston. The problem is, especially if you are police commissioner Ralph Weston, who reads the newspaper standing outside the Cobalt Club, is that you are literally talking to Lamont Cranston. Only it’s The Shadow in his disguise. There follows a fun subterfuge as the Agents of The Shadow basically try and convince Weston that he didn’t really see Lamont Cranston but Cranston’s nephew. And the commissioner bought it.

The odd turn the story took for me was when Kent Allard, famed aviator who crashed in the Guatemalan jungle a dozen years ago, has made a reappearance. He arrives in New York to great fanfare and very quickly, we learn Allard is really The Shadow. And, lest anyone (me included) wasn’t hip on how it all shook down back then, The Shadow visits the house of an old ally, Slade Farrow (another great name!) and reveals his true identity, complete with the entire background. The reasoning is spot on—The Shadow uses the identity of Cranston as long as Cranston stays out of New York—but I couldn’t help wondering how many times in this series and, of course, the comic book masked heroes, that the characters revealed their identity to others. It also makes me wonder if, after this August 1937 issue (number 131 overall) if Lamont Cranston was ever used again. Long-time readers of The Shadow: please let me know.

Anyway, after that startling revelation, the story continued until the inevitable end. Two things struck me about this ending. One, the big finale was somewhat low key. I guess you can’t have every novel end in a big shoot-out or something. The second thing was that The Shadow is very much like Sherlock Holmes in that he knows the likely ending far in advance and just moves the various chess pieces along the way, usually with his agents none the wiser.

I’ve now read two Shadow novels and I’m not gonna stop now. They are a blast. And, as a lifelong Batman fan, I’m really fascinated to research more in depth how Bill Finger drew on his love of The Shadow and helped shape the Dark Knight Detective.

So, fellow Shadow fans, where does this story rank in the all-time list?

The Shadow: Partners in Peril

Well, it took a while, but I finally read my first Shadow novel.*

I think like most of us, I’ve known about The Shadow for a long time. I first discovered him back in the late 70s when my parents purchased some old-time radio episodes on cassette to listen to on vacations. Ten years later, some of those episodes were broadcast on local Houston AM radio on Sunday nights and I’d listen to them as I returned back to college in Austin. And I’d even began collecting the wonderful reprints by Vintage Library to say nothing of some of the comic adaptations. Actually, up until now, the only time I’d encountered The Shadow in print was the two times he guest-starred in Batman comics (my reviews here and here).

Interestingly, it was because of Batman that I first wanted to read PARTNERS IN PERIL. The good folks a Vintage packaged PARTNERS along with LINGO and commissioned a couple of article about how PARTNERS and The Shadow influenced Bill Finger and Bob Kane to create Batman. The historian in me always gravitated to the historical commentary before I read the stories, and this collection is fantastic with not only historical commentary by Will Murray and Anthony Tollin but an introduction by Jerry Robinson, co-creator of Robin and the Joker. But today, the focus is on this November 1936 story.

Reed Harrington calls the police with a desperate situation: he’s been marked for death at midnight. For over a week, Harrington has tried to evade the mysterious caller, but every time, the mystery man finds him. With no one else to turn to, Harrington asks the police for help. Detective Joe Cardona is assigned the case and he’s there in the room when Harrington receives a call just before midnight…and falls dead! In short order, Arnold King arrives at the dead man’s apartment with the same incredible story. What links these two men? Well, they both were former partners of the Milcote Chemical Corporation. Armed with police protection, King holes up and waits…until he, too, falls dead. King dies of electrocution; Harrington of poison.

Enter: The Shadow. He directs his agents to discover the identity of other partners of the company and land on three: Simon Todd, Thomas Porter and his son, Ray. But what complicates the mystery is that Harrington, King, and the two Porters all are former partners of the chemical company. Who would want them dead? Perhaps it is sinister agents of a foreign power out to discover the secret formula for the new chemical weapon created for the United States to use in the next war.  Perhaps it’s something else, but you know before you even read the first word that The Shadow will emerge triumphant.

THOUGHTS

First of all, I really enjoyed this story. I liked how the action played fairly quick and straight. I have since learned that the author of PARTNERS wasn’t Walter Gibson but Theodore Tinsley. In fact, PARTNERS is Tinsley’s first Shadow novel. I read he studied Gibson’s writing style and aimed to achieve a certain verisimilitude with the prose. Today, I can’t say if he did, but the prose flowed well. An aspect of the writing that was likely a product of the times was the omniscient narrator where you rarely got into the characters heads, much less The Shadow. That was likely intentional because Tinsley has us readers (and certain characters) witnessing a thing only to reveal later that The Shadow had already performed a different task. It was very much like the movie serials of the time.

Speaking of The Shadow himself, I enjoyed his disguises and his ability to blend into his surroundings. He appeared both as a young and old workman and Tinsley treated us readers to a classic sly wink as the disguised hero vacated a scene just as another character paused and frowned in odd recognition. A surprising aspect of The Shadow’s character was when he constantly seemed to be five steps ahead of events. Like Sherlock Holmes who knew, for example, the villain in the The Hound of the Baskervilles before he even left London yet sent Watson on errands anyway. The Shadow did the same thing with his team which consisted of Burbank, a man who communicated the plans to other agents, reporter Clyde Burke, and Harry Vincent, who acts as The Shadow’s second-hand man. Ironically, just like Doc Savage’s compadres, Vincent gets himself in trouble and The Shadow has to rescue him, but Vincent proves an able partner.

I listened to PARTNERS from a new all-cast recording up on Audible. It was fantastic and I got a definite old-time radio vibe. There were no sound effects,  but there was soft jazz music at the end of each chapter. A funny aspect of the narrator was his slight pause every time “The Shadow” was mentioned in prose. Another note on the recording: they edited out much of the attribution. Since I had the hard copy and there was a particularly great action sequence, I marked it to re-read and study. It was then, while the audio was playing in my ears, that I noticed they were leaving out some words. As an avid audiobook listener, I wish other productions would do the same thing.

I thoroughly enjoyed PARTNERS IN PERIL and I’ll be quickly moving on to more Shadow novels. THE SHADOW UNMASKS is the only other full-cast recording while THE VOODOO MASTER and THE BLACK FALCON are narrated traditionally.

*P.S. In 2018, I’m reading mindfully and part of that is to read more of what I already own. Ironic timing, then, when I open up the hard copy to mark the passage I mentioned above only to find the receipt. I checked the date: 14 January 2009. I finished PARTNERS  on 14 January 2018. Nice serendipity.

Batman and The Shadow Meet Again: Batman 259

[This post originally was published in July 2016]

Nearly a calendar year after Batman 253, Batman 259 landed in the spinner racks across America in December 1974. Denny O’Neil is again the writer. The artists, whom I failed to note, are also the same: Irv Novick and Dick Giordano. The opening splash page shows a shoot-out with three hoodlums, a shadow in the shape of The Shadow, and a nurse, a gentleman in a suit, and a young boy. Breathlessly, O’Neil warns young readers that they haven’t opened the wrong magazine. “The Caped Crusader is in this scene! But you may not recognize him…because the event you are witnessing occurred a quarter of a century ago.” The gentleman turns out to be Thomas Wayne; the boy is his son, Bruce. The hoods are making their way off with the Starlight Tiara. The unsuspecting civilians walk into the escape and the nurse trips and falls. In the process, the nurse rips off the bandana from one of the hoods. It’s Willy Hank Stamper, the Boy Genius of Crime [doncha just love all the extras to characters back then?]. Just as Stamper is about to shoot her, Thomas Wayne leaps into action. He knocks Stamper away. A shootout ensues and Thomas, Bruce, and the nurse huddle on the floor. There, young Bruce is traumatized by the gunshots. The Shadow triumphs, Stamper is put in jail, but the scars in young Bruce remain.

In a quick two pages, we see Stamper in jail, the murder of Bruce’s parents, and the appearance of the dread Batman. (I always loved that O’Neil used “dread” as an adjective to describe Batman.) After a brief conversation between Batman and Commissioner Gordon—where the cop questions why Batman never uses a gun—Batman as Bruce goes to visit Mildred, the nurse from the opening panel. It’s just at the right time, too. She’s in her wheelchair on the roof of her old folks’ home. Stamper is there! So is Swofford, the jeweler, holding a large jewelry box. A quick fight ensues, but Stamper gets away because Swofford suffers a heart attack and dies. Interestingly, the box of jewels disappears right under Batman’s nose. Hmmm…

The next evening, at the Rare Gem Exhibit, the Starlight Tiara is on display. Bruce Wayne expects Stamper to strike. Instead, there’s a note that claims the Tiara is a fake. Upon closer inspection, it’s true! Suddenly, that peculiar laughter fills the loud speaker. Bruce knows that laugh. He also understands the message: “It will end where it began!” Now, Bruce heads back to the same building as the opening panel. The Swofford jewelry shop is now a dilapidated mannequin store. Batman walks in. Stamper’s there, of course, but he has no quarrel with Batman. Nonetheless, the Dark Knight Detective leaps into action. Stamper shoots at him, and then there’s an odd thing. Batman/Bruce has a flashback to that night 25 years ago. Again, he’s like the young Bruce who was traumatized by the gunshots. It freezes him as he remembers. Stamper’s about to shoot Batman when The Shadow’s laughter interrupts the action. Batman is snapped out of his fright and takes out Stamper.

Now, I’ll admit that in this day and age, Batman is all but a super man. He can do no wrong and has thought things out ten steps ahead of everyone. His brain is his super power. However, one of the things I still enjoy about Batman in the 1970s is that he’s still a man. He has the occasional moments like this. It humanizes him. So this scene worked for me.

The issue ends with Batman and The Shadow talking. The Shadow offers Batman a gift of a gun. Batman refuses. The Shadow points out that the box Swofford [where does O’Neil get these names?] was carrying had a hidden compartment. In there was the real Tiara. Lastly, Batman asks the obvious question: “You know my real identity.” That was the implication from their first adventure in issue 253, but it’s out in the open now. The Shadow assures Bruce that the secret is safe with him. The Shadow disappears into the night. Batman/Bruce laments that he didn’t get a chance to thank him. “He’s freed me from a dread [see the nice counter-use of the word here?] I didn’t realize I had.” O’Neil ends the issue with a text box: “The Batman does not fail…and neither does The Shadow.”

Overall, this is another excellent issue with these two heroes. It makes you really want to have more adventures with these two characters. Too bad that never came to pass. The last panel is a simple box: “We dedicate this story to the memory of our friend Bill Finger.” The co-creator of Batman died in January 1974. Back then, I think only a few knew of Finger’s contributions to the Batman mythos. Now, it’s generally acknowledged that the character we know today as Batman is the way he is largely as a result of Bill Finger. Glad he got his nod.

One more thing: This issue is one of the 100-page issues. DC would write a new story for the featured character and then fill in the rest of the pages with reprints. This way, they could charge $0.60. It was a bargain! In the days before trade paperback collections, this was the best (only?) way for young readers like I was to read the older stories. There would also be special features, like “The Strange Costumes of Batman” in this issue. Best of all for someone of my age, this issue had the new Saturday Morning Schedule for CBS. It was a two-page spread of all the new shows and the times. Back when cartoons and kids’ programming was relegated to Saturday mornings, I would often look for current issues and hope they had a spread like this one. Granted, 1974 was a little ahead of my time, but it is still good to have a peek at what CBS thought kids would like. Good times, huh?

When Batman Met The Shadow: Batman 253

[This post was originally published on another blog in July 2016] As much as I love and enjoy continuity and canonization of material in comics, I also appreciate the more free and open days of the past. Nowadays, DC Comics controls Batman so much that EVERYthing he does is canon and must align with every other book being published. The same is true for just about every other property published in comics nowadays. It’s great because we typically get great titles and stories, but the chances that characters from two universes meet can be pretty low.

Not so in the early 1970s. Batman was enjoying a dark renaissance after the comedic turn he took in the 1960s in both comic and on television. Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams had taken the Dark Knight back to the night and returned him to the atmospheric stories from the 1940s. By 1973, DC had earned the right to publish a new series featuring the pulp hero The Shadow. Denny O’Neil was the writer of that series as well. So I bet it was a no-brainer to have the two dark detectives meet.

Batman 253 was the result. These were the years where Batman’s typical rogues gallery was off-limits to writers, so Batman would face bad guys that were a whole lot less colorful but no less deadly. In this story, titled, “Who Knows What Evil?”, Batman tracks some goons to the docks. I got a huge chuckle and thrill with the opening text of the story: “It is a dark time at Gotham Freight Yards, when dawn is no more than a distant promise…a time when furtive men do furtive things…and when the Batman moves like an avenging wraith.” Pure pulp goodness.

No sooner does Batman take out the goons than one nearly gets the drop on him. But a bullet from the shadows knocks the gun out of the goon’s hand and Batman survives. He hears laughter, “coming from everywhere…and nowhere.” That’s his first clue. Alfred helps Batman figure out that the counterfeiters are based out of Arizona, Tumbleweed Crossing to be exact. Bruce Wayne arrives by bus—yeah, you read that correctly—and gets a room at the local hotel run by an old geezer named Bammy. No sooner does Bruce arrive than a gang of young hoodlums in dune buggies zoom through the town. The slang O’Neil writes for both the youngsters and Batman is so charmingly late 60s/early 70s. Again, after Batman learns that the hoodlums got bribed with “Fool’s money,” he hears the laughter again. Now, he starts to think it may be “Him.”

Later, at the hotel dining room, Bruce meets Lamont Cranston, complete with gray hair on the temples. Bruce doesn’t know of Cranston’s alter ego, but a remark from Cranston is the last clue Bruce needs. Here, in another charming note that’s now gone from comics, there’s a little yellow box: “Bruce [Batman] Wayne seems to have cracked the case! Have you?” It allowed young readers to be detectives. Love this. Still later, toward the end of the book, another clue is revealed. The editor wrote a note with the page and panel number. Sure enough, the clue was there. Wonderful stuff! As you’d expect, Batman travels to the counterfeiter’s hideout and fights them. And, in a very Robin-like move, Batman gets ink thrown in his face. His mysterious benefactor rescues him again, then leaves a note to meet back in Gotham the next night. They do, and The Shadow reveals himself. Basically, Batman is a huge fan and just wants to shake the hand of the old pulp hero. The Knight of Darkness, on the other hand, wanted to know if the Dark Knight deserved his reputation. He did.

As the Shadow melts into the night, Batman asks if the Shadow will come out of retirement. You know what the Shadow’s reply is before you even read it: “That…only the Shadow knows!”

 This was such a fun issue. It lead directly into the Shadow comic series. The two heroes would meet again in Batman 259…but that’s a review for a different day.

The Sun Rises West by Oscar J. Friend

Last week, I attended a small comic convention here in Houston that served as a throwback to the early days of comic book fandom. It was hosted in two rooms in a hotel. One room was devoted to toys; the other to comics. But, happily for me, the owner of Bedrock City Comics brought his pulp magazines.

I had been to his shop last month after I discovered Bradford Scott and his pulp hero, Texas Ranger Walt Slade, in paperback. After reading my first Slade novel, I wanted to read one of his old pulp exploits. I bought one issue of Thrilling Western and reviewed the Slade story. Naturally, I beelined to that section of the pulp magazines on sale last week, but I’m not here to talk about my next Slade story.

No, what I’m here to talk about is the odd mash-up of a western in a World War II setting.

The cover date for Thrilling Western volume 29, #1 is May 1942. I’m not sure how much lead time editor G. B. Farnum gave to writers, but Oscar J. Friend’s story was definitely written after December 7, 1941.

 “The Sun Rises West” features cowboy Chuck Hardin. He’s been hired to work a cattle ranch out on Hawaii. With just the description of Hardin, you know you’re in for a treat: other than battered suitcases and his typical cowboy attire (you know what I’m talking about), he brings his Winchester and two double-action .45 six-shooters. The other character comment on Hardin’s attire more than once.

There’s a girl here, but she doesn’t figure too much into the story other than the typical rivalry between Hardin and Montague Townley, the ranch’s manager. With a name like that, you also know what kind of man he is. Well, there’s also a native Hawaiian co-star in Hamelaki George who fills the role perfectly.

And you already know who the bad guys are just from reading the story’s title and sub-title: A Novelete [sic] of Texas Guns in Hawaii. Yup, the Japanese, specifically the houseboy Mikimatu. The old pulps were filled with descriptions and terms we in the 21st Century cringe at, and that’s all there. But Friend piles it on. After being introduced to Mikimatu, cowboy Hardin never pronounces his name correctly for the rest of the story, instead using terms like “Mikiblotto.” The physical
descriptions are worse. But that was a different time, and when Friend wrote the story and the readers consumed this story six months after Pearl Harbor, I don’t suspect many minded.

Speaking of Pearl Harbor, it doesn’t take a genius to know that’s when this story takes place. The day is lost for America, but Hardin, naturally, wins the day at the Robinson Ranch.

The story is good and about what you’d expect. Not much to write home about, but it’s a fantastic snapshot at a particular time and place.

The Haunted Legion: A Walt Slade Pulp Story by Bradford Scott

A little under a month ago, I discovered Walt Slade, El Halcon, the Texas Ranger extraordinaire as chronicled by prolific author Bradford Scott (aka A. Leslie Scott). It was a chance meeting, Slade and I, in an antique store in Jefferson, Texas. The book was FOUR MUST DIE, which, as it turned out—thanks to some excellent background from James Reasoner—was the one book in the paperback series not written by Scott. But I loved the character so I immediately followed-up by reading KILLER’S DOOM, another novel in the paperback series, this time actually written by Scott himself.

But Walt Slade got his start in the pulps. He was an honest-to-God pulp hero, his adventures gracing most covers of Thrilling Western. If you read James Reasoner’s short history of this character, you’ll learn Scott took Slade out of the pulps and reformulated him for the emerging paperback book audience. Having read two novels—with dozens more to go—I was quite curious about one of his pulp stories.

Last week, I stopped into one of the local Bedrock City comic stores here in Houston because I knew the owner sold pulps. I hoped he would have any issue of Thrilling Western and I was in luck. He had a handful and I bought the May 1947 issue. The Walt Slade story in question was “The Haunted Legion”—and the cover font was that old scary font from the 1940s! What was the pulp version of Slade like?

Well, what immediately jumped out at me were the illustrations. As usual with the pulps, pencil illustrations accompanied nearly every story. With “The Haunted Legion” being the cover story, it had more than a few. I’m not sure who the illustrator was, but his take on Slade was pretty much as described by Scott and how I pictured him. So far, so good.

As the story being, Slade is down at Matagorda Bay, Texas, and before you know it, we get ourselves a story. It’s told by an old Mexican who relates the tale of Black Mora. And when I say he tells the story, I’m talking almost a full first chapter in which the POV actually switching to Mora himself and the legend of this pirate captain and the ghosts that walk the region. Twas a tad odd, but it certainly captured the mood, especially considering Bradford Scott’s penchant for flowery descriptions.

No sooner does Slade hear this story than his eyes catch sight of a group of men on horseback. It’s stormy and he only sees them when the lightening flashes once. The next time electricity illuminates the sky, they are gone. But there is also a major bonfire. A nearby house and barn are engulfed in flames. How? And might the two things be related?

Well, of course they are.

A key difference in this pulp story versus the paperback stories literally jumped off the page: language. In “The Haunted Legion,” Slade talks just like most other characters, and Bradford Scott writes the dialogue using phonically spelled words: Figger, mebbe, yuh, etc. I don’t remember Slade’s dialogue being that way in the two books I’ve read so far. It made Slade seem dumber and, frankly, it irritated me a little. I got used to it, but I guess I just like my heroes to sound smart.

There’s a good dose of gunfights and action, but there was a surprising level of mere investigation. Like a good traditional mystery, Bradford Scott laid out the clues for the reader and the clever one might have been able to deduce the culprit. I didn’t, but then I wasn’t trying to. But Slade gets to tell the local sheriff—another dumb lawman, but one who is loyal to Slade—all the clues that led him to discover the owlhoot. Were it not for his clothes, Slade could easily have come across as a detective from England. It was clever and wrapped up the story neatly.

All the traits that readers enjoy about Slade is on display here, including his fast guns, clever brain, and singing voice. He is a very enjoyable character and I’ll happily be reading more of his adventures. I liked the short form of this story pretty well. It’s an eight-chapter story, and, in true pulp form, each chapter has three sub-sections. They are easily identified by a large first letter and small caps in the first couple of words. It’s pure formula, but when you like something, you can simply consume it and be satisfied. I was satisfied with “The Haunted Legion,” and I may have to make a return trip back to Bedrock City and buy the rest of the magazines.

Forgotten Books: The Fourth Gunman by Merle Constiner

Sometimes, a western features a guy walking, riding, talking, and thinking. But little in the way of shooting.

THE FOURTH GUNMAN by Merle Constiner is the first book I’ve read by him. It is one half of an Ace Double, the flip side being SLICK ON THE DRAW by Tom West. I own a handful of Ace Doubles and, based on the description, I chose Constiner’s book first.

The story revolves around George Netfield, proprietor of a saloon up in Kirkville, Wyoming (I think). He is what you’d typically find in a western written in 1958: tough, lean, cunning, quick on the draw, but quicker on talking. But the end of chapter 1, one of his workers lays dead. He realizes there are some bad men roaming around the county, many of them from the 7 Diamond ranch. Additionally, some of the finer men in the county are gathering up steam in a more legal manner. Lastly, a small cadre of gun totters made their presence known. I think you can guess how many there were by the title.

Little by little, Netfield seems to be the only man who discerns what’s really going on. He’s out to stop it, but roadblocks and bad hombres keep getting in his way. A rich man by the name of Crewe, old and somewhat enfeebled, doesn’t think much of Netfield’s suspicions, especially considering Crewe has employed two of the bad guys. Little by little, the noose around Netfield tightens, and he has only a few allies…if they can stay alive.

Perhaps it’s just an assumption but I’ve always thought of westerns, especially older pulp-inspired westerns from the 1950s, as action-packed romps with lots of shoot-outs and fighting. THE FOURTH GUNMAN certainly has its share of fighting, but it is few and far between. There are a few fine action sequences, one in a lumber yard that’s positively stellar. But I have to admit much of the action was over so quick that I have double-back and re-read certain sentences to verify bullets were loosed. The action was so quick that the gunshots were over in a sentence. At first I was surprised, but the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that true violence back in the old west was often swift, brutal, deadly, and over within seconds. Then my respect for Constiner’s book grew.

But still it seemed that Netfield did a lot of talking. The story read a bit like a detective tale, where Netfield would go here or there, gathering pieces of information, and then piecing it together. He wouldn’t always tell other characters and, thus, we readers would also be in the dark. But along the way, the cast of suspects keeps growing and  you pretty much figure out what the bad guys are up to, and then it is only a matter of time to see how Netfield would get through the book.

Whenever I read westerns—heck, any book really—I always have a pencil in my hand so I can circle or underline a word, a phrase, or a bit of history. There were few pages without a mark when I completed this novel, not the least of which was Constiner’s great descriptions of the landscape and the towns. For a genre that likes and prefers lean storytelling and descriptions, Constiner made the extra effort to color his prose well.

I enjoyed THE FOURTH GUNMAN and will certain pick up future Merle Constiner books when I see them.

Anyone else read this book? Any recommendations for other Constiner books?

Forgotten Books: The Pulp Jungle by Frank Gruber

When I read Frank Gruber’s retelling of his days as a struggling then successful pulp fiction writer from the 1930s, I realized something important: I don’t have it so bad here in 2017.

Frank Gruber was one of the more well-known and prolific authors to emerge from the pulp fiction years from the 1920s through World War II. By his own estimates, Gruber wrote more than 300 pulp fiction yarns, 60 novels, and more than 200 screenplays and television scripts. THE PULP JUNGLE is his retelling of his time as a writer, how he started, how he persevered, the decisions he made, and how it all turned out.

In a word, it is a sobering read.

Like many of the successful pulp writers in the depth of the Great Depression, Gruber wrote everything. A ledger from the months August 1932 to June 1934 indicated he wrote 174 “pieces” which totaled 620,000 words, all on a Remington manual typewriter. He called himself a sloppy writer, so he had to retype everything after he corrected the manuscript. The fiction spanned the gamut: Sunday School stories, detective stories, love stories, spicy stories, sports stories, etc. Those words were not solely fiction. He wrote tons of articles often on topics he had to learn on the fly. In the book, Gruber lists the dollar amounts he earned for various pieces. Even in 1932 dollars, those meager sales didn’t add up to a living wage.

But he persevered. His move to New York in 1934 proved to be the kind of starving artist story that sounds good when you’ve made it but horrible at the time. He arrived in the Big Apple with the Remington, clothes that fit into a suitcase, and $40 after paying rent. And “I had something else…the will to succeed.” But those early New York years were bad. He “existed. Some days I had a single meal, some days I tasted no food at all other than the tomato soup at the Automat.” The tomato soup in question is actually warm water (which was free), catsup (also free), and crackers (free). That was the “soup.”

Gruber got two breaks that helped him on his way. One came from honesty. He had been paid twice for a single story and, reluctantly, Gruber had sent the second check back. That ended up paying dividends when the editor of Writer’s Digest came calling to see the man who had returned that check. The editor paid Gruber to be a contact in New York.

The other break—The Big Break—came in 1934 in one of those great true tales you hear. Gruber gets a call on Friday afternoon. Operator #5 was going to press the next day but was a story short. Could Gruber write a 5500-word story overnight? In his retelling, he started at 8pm and had a character. Two hours later, he had his leading lady. By 3:30am, he had his big finale…but still needed a plot thread to weave it all together. He got it, and delivered the 18 pages by 9am. He didn’t hear back for a few days. He started to worry, so he called on the editor. Oh, he was told, we pay on Friday. Pay? Yup, the story was purchased. And then he was asked for another. According to Gruber, “I was ‘in.’”

From that moment on, Gruber worked steadily and for higher paying markets. He cracked the big dog on the block—Black Mask—and kept going. The key factor here was that Gruber never stopped working. Yes he had made it, but in those days, a writer was only as good as the next sale. Not like today. So he kept working on stories, then branched out into novels, both detective stories as well as westerns. All the contacts he had made during the lean years paid dividends later on, including when he moved to Hollywood.

THE PULP JUNGLE is chock full of great little nuggets of truth. Writing to market is a growing aspect of indie writers, but Gruber and his pals did it back in the 1930s. They had to or they didn’t eat. Another modern trend is books or courses or classes on writing. Yes they serve a valuable purpose—I greatly benefited from two online courses with Dean Wesley Smith late in 2016—but constant writing means a writer is constantly improving his craft. By definition, each story or book is better than the previous. I can attest to that as well.

For any person who dreams of a full-time writing career in 2017, that dream is still attainable. But what the story of Frank Gruber’s professional life suggests is that hard work, determination, and perseverance will enable a writer to hone the skills necessary to become a full-time writer. It also demonstrates that writers must recognize and seize opportunities when they present themselves. Don’t think you could write a story overnight (or insert your own personal challenge here)? Perhaps Gruber didn’t think he could do it either…until he said “yes” and then he delivered.

You can, too.

Reading THE PULP JUNGLE is a great snapshot into the life of a real pulp fiction writer and might be essential reading for any writer who is considering the professional writing life.

Movie Review: The Legend of Tarzan

I’m to the point now where I rarely, if ever, read any reviews prior to seeing a movie. I watch the trailer and if it grabs me, I’ll go see the movie. And, boy, did the Legend of Tarzan trailer grab me! I had no idea there was a new Tarzan movie being made so the trailer was a happy surprise. But a lot of times, trailers stuff all the best parts into the previews and leave nothing for the movie. Would LoT suffer the same fate?

No! Absolutely not! If you love Tarzan, if you love adventure movies, this is a great film. Highly entertaining with many sequences that had me smiling and all but cheering out loud.

Legends of Tarzan starts with a decision that was probably the best decision possible: make this movie NOT be the origin. When the film opens, John Clayton III is already back in London, in the House of Lords. He’s married to Jane Porter and they are living their lives happily. His days as Tarzan are legend. Those stories are already printed in dime novels of the day. Now, scattered throughout the movie are flashbacks to Tarzan’s origin. And they worked well to educate those who may not know Tarzan’s story—who, exactly, is this?—and to flesh out this story’s through line. I suppose some folks in this century might not know Tarzan, but they will be fully up-to-date after LoT.

The story kicks off with an invitation from the King of Belgium for Lord Greystoke to travel to the Congo and tour the new schools and such. Unbeknownst to John Clayton is that this plan is really an elaborate ruse by Leon Rom, played by Christopher Waltz, to lure Tarzan down to the Congo to capture him and deliver him to Chief Mbonga (Djimon Hounsou). Mbonga, you see, has his eye on vengeance because Tarzan killed Mbenga’s son. Reluctantly, Tarzan agrees to the trip and is accompanied not only by Jane (Margot Robbie) but Samuel Jackson, playing Dr. George Washington Williams. Now, Jackson was nowhere in the trailers so he was a complete surprise to me. He brought the comedic relief. He also served as a surrogate audience member not familiar with all that Tarzan can do. He performed his task just like you’d expect Samuel Jackson to do. After all, in 2016, Jackson only play one character: “Samuel Jackson.” If you like that, you’ll be fine with him. If you don’t, he’ll be annoying. I’ll admit I was initially jarred when I realized Jackson wasn’t just in a cameo, but I like him so I went with it.

If you have read any of the books—I’ve only read the first three—or seen any of the movies, you know what’s going to happen so there’s little use in relating it here. Jane gets herself captured and Tarzan must rescue her. Heck, even the trailer has Christopher Waltz deliver a standout line: “He’s Tarzan. You’re Jane. He will come.” In order to do that, Tarzan and his growing team of allies, both animal and human, traverse through the jungle where Tarzan meets up with old friends and enemies. It is in these scenes where modern technology has finally allowed you to see the images in your head when you read the books. The gorillas are HUGE and vicious. The elephants even huger but graceful. And the jungle environs are exactly what I wanted to see.

An interesting note to the characters of Jackson and Waltz. Both don’t know what Tarzan can do so each comment—almost meta-comment—on what’s happening. It’s humorous and it didn’t take me out of the film. But I can see where some might find that irritating. No one in the theater yesterday minded a bit. We laughed at the funny spots and a few folks clapped when the movie was over.

Alexander Skarsgård is new to me. I never watched True Blood so, for me, he was Tarzan. He did such a great job showing you how difficult it was for John Clayton to hold back his savage upbringing in London. Even in Africa, when the chase is on, initially, he is still reticent. But when Jane is taken, boy, hold onto your hats. Even Jane tells Waltz basically “You have no idea what’s in store for you.” She says it with such honesty that it comes across not as bragging but as a certainty.

There are so many great sequences in this film that to tell but a few would spoil it for y’all. The stampede in the trailer is exactly what you think it is and it hearkens back to The Beasts of Tarzan where he can talk to the animals. Waltz’s little accouterment is interesting and I’d like someone more versed in the lore to let me know if it’s from the books or made up for the movie. Either way, I thought it pretty nifty. The soundtrack by Rupert Gregson-Williams is pretty good at mixing African beats and sounds with traditional orchestral music. In many scenes, with the vista of Africa on the screen, the music swirled to match.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, whether he was writing Tarzan, John Carter, Caron of Venus, or who knows what else, often had a standard plot formula: girl gets kidnapped and guy must rescue her. It’s old fashioned, but it’s also pure. You don’t need anything else. You don’t need angst. You only need love. Love drives the character to great feats of daring-do to save the one he loves. It has it slow moments, but that’s only to let you catch your breath before the next action sequence. It is a modern pulp adventure movie with all the trappings of modern movie making behind it.

If you love that kind of movie, you will love this movie.

I do, and I did.

It hit every beat I want to see, that I expected to see, but did so in such a way as to be greater than the sum of its parts. This is a fantastic summer movie that I will be adding to my DVD collection later this year.

Blogs I Like: Rough Edges by James Reasoner

James Reasoner has written so many books I’m not even sure he knows how many. A career writer of over 40 years, Reasoner is an old-school pulp writer working in the modern age. He loves and adores all types of fiction—especially westerns—and he channels all of that enthusiasm into his blog, Rough Edges.

Reading the Rough Edges blog is like sitting next to a kid in the candy store and having him tell you about all the different types of candy, who made them, and which are his favorites. Actually, the image works better if you imagine that same kid but in a drug store sometime in the mid-1960s. This was the time when comic books and dime store paperbacks could be seen in just about every establishment. This kid is a voracious reader, consuming just about anything, but favoring westerns, SF, and old pulp superstars like Doc Savage and the Shadow. Throw in the trips to the library and bookstores and you have a kid who realized he loved to read and never stopped.

Now, with the Rough Edges blog, Reasoner has many more years of reading and knowledge to share. He has many regular features. One of my favorites is Saturday Morning Western Pulp where he’ll take a particular issue of an old western pulp and comment on the stories, authors, and cover artists. Sunday gets you Bonus Pulp, which could be a detective mag or a SF one. He typically does the Forgotten Book Friday segment where he’ll take an old book and/or author and “re-introduce” it to modern audiences who may have been too young to have read the particular book first hand. (I fall into that category a lot.) Somewhere along the way he started contributing Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies where he’ll examine some movie out of the mainstream and tell you why he likes it.

Reasoner, however, isn’t just a fan. He’s a working craftsman of words. He produces millions of words a year in content. Many of his books are under a house name or pen name, but you’d be surprised—no, amazed—at how prolific he is. And, a few years back, he, and his life, Livia Reasoner, started Rough Edges Press, an independent publishing house. Rough Edges Press releases some old titles by other authors and some of Reasoner’s short westerns that he wrote back in the day. He also releases new material like his Outlaw Ranger series. Most recently, Rough Edges publishes Blaze, the new adult western series featuring husband and wife gunslingers, J.D. and Kate Blaze. That series is up to eleven.

But it’s the Rough Edges blog that has become a constant companion. Every Saturday morning, one of the first things I do is check Rough Edges blog. No matter the day, I read Reasoner’s blog entries. Reasoner’s interests often dovetail into mine, so I’ve long considered him my tour guide for stuff I like and other stuff I'm probably going to like.

Why don’t you come along for the ride?

Book Review Club: CANARY by Duane Swierczynski

(This is the April 2015 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click the icon at the bottom of this essay.)

With a bright yellow cover with a title like that, I wasn't sure what to make of the book CANARY by Duane Swierczynski. Before I read this book, the word conjured exactly two things in my head: a bird in a cage and the bird in a mineshaft. I had no idea what the word meant in the crime fiction context. Now I do, and I really like it.

Canary in crime fiction is a confidential informant. I guess because they sing like a bird to the law and spill all the dirt on the bad guys. The book CANARY focuses on a young college student, Sarie Holland. She attends school in Philadelphia--Swierczynski’s town--and, as the book opens, she’s nursing a beer at a party the night before she has to pick up her Dad at the airport. The mom’s dead and Sarie and her little brother live at home. It’s the night before Thanksgiving and she and her pals are studying for exams...at a party. Right. There’s a cute guy Sarie calls D. and she kinda likes him so she’s pretty surprised when he asks her if she could give him a life to a friend’s house. D. doesn’t drive and, after checking her watch and doing the mental math, Sarie agrees. At the destination, D. tells her to park in the special spot his friend has reserved.

No big deal, right? Wrong. Narcotics cop Ben Wildey is there, staking out the house of a mid-level dealer in the area--the very same house D. just entered. Unbeknownst to Sarie, Wildey’s spotted her and busts her. All he wants is D’s name. He is the one wearing the red pants, after all, you know, “your boyfriend.” Sarie doesn’t cave so Wildey has little choice but to bust her. Faced with the crisis that could ruin her life, Sarie opens Door #2: she decides/is forced to become a confidential informant. A canary.

Now, in the hands of some writers, this story starts to become a sermon on the dangers of drugs, the evils it can do, how the justice system is all out of whack. Well, rest assured, this is not that kind of book. With Swierczynski as the wheelman (wink wink), you are in for one heck of a good ride.

You see, Sarie takes her role as a canary pretty seriously. In fact, she’s convinced that as soon as she gives Wildey a name, he’ll be off her back for good. Being the good college student, she does research and starts to learn about the criminal world. And then she starts to deliver information to Wildey who just happens to be angling for a huge score back at the station. So is his captain. Then words gets around the criminal ranks that there’s a new snitch, and, well, drug dealers don’t like snitches.

The book is written in an interesting fashion. When it’s Sarie, Swierczynski writes in first person. Anyone else is in third person. This has the great advantage of literally getting inside Sarie’s head, the head of straight-arrow, middle-class college girl, as she learns and acts on what she learns. I listened to the book and Sarie’s narration was handled very well by Casey Holloway. She gives Sarie snark, fear, anger, determination, and humor all in the voice. George Bryant handles everything else and his nuances among the different characters, good guys as well as bad, are wonderful. On the page, Sarie’s words are in a different font so it’s a nice visual cue to let the reader know the a change in point of view is taking place.

I didn’t expect many of the twists and turns CANARY took but I enjoyed them all. There was a moment of coincidence that gave me a slight pause, but, by then, I was so into the book, I didn’t care. And then there’s the ending. Completely satisfying.

I’ve read many of Swierczynski’s books and enjoyed them all. I can, with good confidence, recommend CANARY, preferably the audio. It’s fantastic.

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@Barrie Summy

Wading Into War: Cover Reveal

I'll admit something to y'all: this is a bit exciting for me. Well, let me take that back. This is a lot exciting.

When you are in the position of creating cover art for your debut book, two things run through your mind, at least they did for me. One is the knowledge that the cover will be the first cover for a book you've written that the world will see. For better or worse, the reading public will identify you with that cover. I know I do that with the authors I like. When I think of Dennis Lehane, I think of MYSTIC RIVER and the hardback cover art.

His other covers flow through my mind but only after I see that 2001 novel. The same holds true for movies. This is always the first image I think of regarding Star Wars.

With all of that pressure in mind, my first cover had to be something of which I was proud. More to the point, it had to be the physical embodiment of what I saw in my head. WADING INTO WAR is a period piece, set in 1940. That’s deep in the heart of the pulp era and I wanted a cover that reflected that vibe. Moreover, I wanted cover *art*, a picture that illustrated a scene in the book. Lastly, I wanted to put my own stamp on it, to bring my quirky vision to this project.

So here it is.

 

Font: With this being a period piece, I wanted the title font and the shape of the letters to give the reader a clue to the contents. I think art deco is a great font and it instantly sprang to mind when I envisioned the cover.

Colors: Most of the old pulp magazine covers blared out of the newsstand with vivid colors. I, on the other hand, wanted a more black-and-white image. I’ll be honest that the style of the Batman Animated Series was my inspiration for the figures. The primary color is yellow, partly for its ability to stand out in a crowded ebook field but also as an homage to the old pulp magazines that had a monocolor cover with art on top of it. The blood is the jump color to let the reader know that dude in the house means business.

Logo: Initially, I wasn’t going to have the logo on the cover. Then, after my last markup to my graphic artist, I realized I had a blank space. Enter the logo. And, frankly, it hearkens back to the things I first read: comics. Again, a deliberate choice.

The Graphic Designer

Speaking of all this, you may wonder if I’m a multi-talented renaissance man who can write as well as design. Wonder no longer: that ain’t me. But I had the perfect solution.

A good friend of mine and former co-worker, Ike, was more than happy to accommodate me. You have already seen his good work with the logo for Quadrant Fiction Studio and now you have evidence of what he can do for a book cover.

When Ike and I worked together at our day job, I used to joke that he was halfway finished with a project before I was even finished telling him what needed to be done. He’s an intuitive artist who can give you exactly what you want but will also guide you into making better decisions. He fully cooperated with me in all my weird ways of trying to describe what I wanted. We no longer work at the same day job and our homes are across Houston from each other so we relied on emails and Skype calls. He never batted an eye, even when I’d ask for a little tweaks multiple times. Ike was nonplussed. In fact, the more this project went on, the more enthusiasm we both showed for this final product.

And it shows. I can think of no better compliment for Ike than this: without him and his willingness to work with me and his excellent ability to create something from nothing, this cover, this work of art that I saw in my head, would not be real. It would still be inside my head.

But it isn’t. It’s out here, for all the world see. Thanks, man, for making a dream a reality.

(Originally published at Do Some Damage, 7 February 2015)

Book Review Club: Fun and Games by Duane Swiercznyski

(This is the August 2011 entry for Barry Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click the icon at the end of my review.)

Job I would not want: Person trying to classify a Duane Swiercznyski book.

Sure, “crime fiction” is a nice umbrella if you want to use it, but that doesn’t quite do justice to the types of books Swiercznyski writes. Okay, early books like “The Wheelman” are straight up crime-y things, but some of his more recent books—The Blonde, Expiration Date—are not. Put his newest hard-to-classify tale, Fun and Games, into the latter camp.

Charles Hardie makes his living an interesting way: he’s a professional house sitter. He’s also a former Philadelphia cop who is fleeing personal demons from the past. Only things he requires other than the paycheck are booze and old movies, preferably on DVD. His latest contract is the LA home of a musician who has been called away to Europe.

Lane Madden, B-movie actress and A-list druggie, is driving in the Hollywood hills. She, too, has demons in her past, as the tabloids are quite eager to exploit. Those headlights she sees following her? They’re getting closer. Thinking the driver will pass her, she stops (dumb move). She’s attacked, but escapes into the night.

Think these two stories tie in together? Natch. Hardie arrives at the musician’s home and the keys aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Long story short, he has to break in to said house only to be attacked by a woman who turns out to be Madden. She thinks Hardie’s one of Them. Notice the capitalization? “Them” are the Accident People, killers hired to off high profile celebrities and make the deaths look, well, accidental. Hardie doesn’t believe her, until some stuff hits the proverbial fan.

Job I would not want: People who clean up after bloody death scenes.

I’ve read enough Swiercznyski books now to know one of his patterns: many of his tales take place in a short timeframe. The Blonde, in book time, lasted about twelve hours, Severance Package even less. Fun and Games, if I had to count up the hours, maybe clocks in about a day, give or take. The brilliance of this technique—where a reader is halfway through a book realizing only then that only a few hours have passed for the characters—is the distillation of the action down to a science. Jumping in and out of characters’ POVs, Swiercznyski is able to describe the action with balletic grace, giving nuances to violence reserved only for slo-mo shots in action films. Speaking of action films, there’s a great moment when Madden, faced with her own death a few times, relies on all the training she did for her B-movies. Even as she’s kicking ass, she’s marveling (and thanking) all her hours of training.

I’m usually a slower reader, but reading a Swiercznyski breaks the curve. Fun and Games travels at such a high rate of speed that I was devouring this book in chunks, not chapters. And the pop culture references are a scream. It’s one of Swiercznyski’s trademark prose stylings to reference just about anything at a given point. Since he and I are roughly the same age, he knows what I know, and I love it.

Another fun aspect of Fun and Games was the setting. Swiercznyski’s a Philly guy, the City of Brotherly Love plays a vital role in his books. Fun and Games is a California novel. In the afterward, you learn the thing Swiercznyski experienced that triggered the germ of this story. I’ve only visited California a couple of times, but I seriously got the vibe from this book. Heck, now I want to visit again.

The Accident People. Now, this concept is scary, but, in Swiercznyski’s hands, they’re a little bit funny, too. Don’t get me wrong. They kill people, staging the deaths as accidents. But you get enough background here to want to know more about these guys. Best thing about the book: the cliffhanger ending. You see, Fun and Games is the first of a trilogy of Charlie Hardie stories. Usually, Swiercznyski’s characters are so beat to hell by the end of the book that any thought of a continuing series is moot. Well, Hardie gets his ass handed to him again and again, but he keeps getting up. Yeah, the book ends on a cliffhanger, but guess what? You get chapter one of Hell and Gone, the next book, as a bonus. (Checking the calendar) How long until October?

Classifying a Swiercznyski book: pulp fiction, pure and simple, just like they used to write back in the day. Guy and gal get into a bad situation and have to fight their way out of it. Are they gonna make it? Read and find out.

Job I do want: Reader of anything Duane Swiercznyski writes.

P.S. Once you are done reading, head on over to Do Some Damage's book club. We're chatting about Fun and Games this month.

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Book Review Club: Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann

(This is the June 2011 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For a complete list of participants, click on the icon at the end of this review.)

Buck Rogers had one. Flash Gordon had one. Batman has had one throughout the years, especially in the always-entertaining Brave and the Bold cartoon. Tony Stark certainly has one. Heck, even James Bond had one back in 1964. Know what I’m talking about? Jet packs. For as much as we’re living in the future of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, we still don’t have jet packs or flying cars. But in the world of Ghosts of Manhattan, at least one person possesses jet-powered flight in an alternate 1926. That would be the heroic vigilante, The Ghost.

In George Mann’s novel, America is in a Cold War with Great Britain since the end of the First World War. Coal-powered cars, with their black effluvia, clog the atmosphere above Manhattan, where the air is filled with dirigibles and biplanes capable of launching upright because of rockets on their wings. In this environment, the police have their hands full not only with run-of-the-mill crime but also with a criminal boss nicknamed The Roman. Like any good villain, he leaves a calling card: two Roman coins on the eye sockets of corpses.

Into this justice vacuum swoops The Ghost. Black-clad, with a duster-length trench coat, fedora, and enhance red goggles, The Ghost, in the opening chapter, foils a bank heist using deadly force and flechette guns (tiny steel darts). If you’ve seen Batman Begins, specifically the scene where Batman first does his thing, you’ll love this opening chapter. I did. It grabbed me, and I happily went with it.

What’s fun about this adventure with a masked hero is the steps Mann deploys to keep the reader guessing The Ghost’s alter-ego. I’ll admit it didn’t take a huge leap of logic to surmise the truth, but he still made it interesting. Gabriel Cross is a bored millionaire, known for his parties and his ladies. One lady in particular is Celeste Parker, a singer at a night club and a necessary component in The Roman’s plans. Felix Donovan is a detective in charge of the investigation into the murder of a famous senator. It doesn’t take too long for Donovan to meet the famous vigilante. From there, they team up to battle strange things and, with any luck, survive.

The book is fast-paced, a true modern pulp novel in the spirit of The Shadow and Batman. The history of this alternate America is delivered piecemeal and mostly in shorter paragraphs and bits of dialogue, a helpful way to show the broader world without stopping the action for pages and pages of tedious world-building. The Ghost is a believable hero. He relies on his wits and his gadgets–he’s got jet packs on his legs, allowing him to fly!–more so than martial arts and fighting ability. He also adjusts his strategies along the way as he encounters adversaries who cannot be defeated using his conventional weapons. In fact, these particular adversaries almost overcome The Ghost in their first encounter.

The book isn’t without some flaws. I thought the lead-up to the big finale seemed to come out of nowhere. Unlike, say, Gabriel Hunt at the Well of Eternity or Dan Brown’s more famous novels, there aren’t a lot of clues that build upon one another, stumping the reader and the heroes along the way. It was almost as if Mann just needed a few action set pieces in order to build a larger story. True, the set pieces were good, and the down time wasn’t boring. I just felt a lot of drive to get to the end, even though I was not given a lot of clues as to what the end was going to be.

One of the things I liked about this novel is that Mann doesn’t feel the need to explain everything. Bi-planes have rocket packs for vertical lift-off. Okay. But there’s no mention of Robert Goddard or the history of the invention of the rockets. They just are. I’ve been told that this 1926-era world is the extension of Mann’s earlier, Victorian-era novels featuring Maurice Newbury and Veronica Hobbes. I’ve not read those books, so, perhaps there’s a longer explanation there.

Speaking of unexplained things in Ghosts of Manhattan, halfway through the book, I kept waiting for something science-fictional to occur. This novel is released by Pyr Books, a prominent publisher of science fiction and fantasy novels. I’ve seen the gorgeous covers (this cover art should stop people in their tracks) and read some of Pyr’s books, so I know what I’ve come to expect from them. Frankly, Ghosts of Manhattan is the exception. You take away the rockets, the coal-powered cars, and other paraphernalia decorating the scenery (including the big finish), and you end up with a book Lester Dent might have actually written in 1933 for Doc Savage. I don’t consider Doc to be science fiction. What’s so science-fictional about this book? Moreover, what’s so science-fictional about this type of alternate history?

When it comes to alt-history, I see two categories. There are stories like Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South, which has time travel. Obviously, that’s SF. But what about Turtledove’s other Civil War book, How Few Remain and its sequels, which take a “what if” question and answer it from a non-SF point of view? Same could be said for Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which was nominated for an Edgar (mystery) and a Hugo (SF), winning the latter. There’s no SF trope in Chabon’s novel, just alt-history.

I posed this question to Pyr editor Lou Anders, and he gave me some food for thought. Citing a Norman Spinrad article from Asimov’s magazine, Anders wrote the following:

Basically, alt history has historically been maligned by at least a subset of SF culture as pretend “What if” stories that, as you point out with the Chabon, don’t have any other SFNal tropes/elements in them. But these days, when you have every physicist using the word “multiverse” and the most likely explanation for all the quantum weirdness is that we are in only one of a number of possible realities, while at the same time have people like Charles Stross debunking the idea that we will *ever* achieve human-crewed ships engaged in interplanetary travel, suddenly all the space opera starts to look like make believe wish fulfillment and the alt history like that which actually has some bearing in science.

But these are quibbles, hair-splitting when what is really important is whether or not the book in question is entertaining, moves you, and has something to say besides.

Ghosts of Manhattan is certainly entertaining, a true summer thrill-ride of a book. I’m looking forward to future installments of this character and his world. Do yourself a favor this summer: see Thor, Captain America, and all the other superhero films, and then head on over to a bookstore and pick up a copy of Mann’s book. In this day and age, you just can’t have enough heroes.

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