Who's In It: Robert Horton (Wagon Train), Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball), and Richard Jaeckel (the original 3:10 to Yuma)
What It's About: It's Armageddon meets Alien as a crew of astronauts blow up an asteroid headed toward Earth, but bring a horrible monster back with them to their space station base.
How It Is: Delightful! The screenplay is by Batman's co-creator Bill Finger and it's full of imagination and wild ideas. The effects are charmingly goofy, the models of the ships are wonderfully retro-futuristic, and the theme song by Richard Delvy would belong in a Bond film if it wasn't about, you know, Green Slime.
I still don't love the movie though, because the contentious, central relationship between the rival space station commanders (Horton and Jaeckel) doesn't really go anywhere. Horton's Jack Rankin is a no-nonsense tough guy who's willing to sacrifice people to succeed at a larger mission. Jaeckel's Vince Elliott is compassionate to the point of being seen as weak by his superiors and Rankin. They're basically Spock and McCoy with no Kirk to mediate between them. Paluzzi's Dr Lisa Benson tries to bring peace, but she doesn't have the authority to really keep them in line, so they just end up fighting over her.
It's a good set up; it just never resolves super well. Benson claims to love Elliott, but of course she's actually into Rankin because it's the '60s and he's the alpha male. And I kept expecting some kind of situation to occur where one or the other (or both) of the men's ideologies were tested, but that never happened. They come to a resolution about their relationship, but not because they actually have to work through anything.
Still, the rest of the movie is so fun that it's become a new, cheesy favorite.
Edmond Hamilton has many claims to fame in a science fiction writing career that spanned fifty years. He began in the pages of Weird Tales, contributing the most SF of material in the largely horror magazine. He also explored his own brand of fantasy and even wrote a few legitimate horror tales. Hamilton's style of cosmic-sized adventure won him the nickname "World Wrecker" Hamilton, though he was also capable of writing deeply personal stories too, like "He That Hath Wings" (Weird Tales, July 1938). In 1940 he was chosen to write the Captain Future series created by Mort Weisinger. Hamilton's career peaked in 1949 when he wrote his most famous novel, The Star Kings.
In 1946, Ed made another choice that would affect his direction for the next twenty years. He began writing comics for DC's Superman and Legion of Super-Heroes. He would leave comics in 1966, returning to stories and novels full time. Before that day, Hamilton would write largely superhero fare, but occasionally he got to return to his SF roots in comics like Strange Adventures. In the inaugural issue he began his "Chris KL99" series, which would appear in seven issues. Loosely based on the Captain Future formula, Chris KL99 is a space explorer who flies around in his ship the Pioneer, with his three sidekicks: a Martian adventurer named Halk, the Venusian scientist Jero, and his chameolonic dog, Loopy. (Interestingly, Hamilton wrote six more Captain Future novellas for Startling Stories while penning this comic. There were enough space adventurers around in the comics to not make this a conflict of interest.) Chris got his name from Christopher Columbus, because he was the first baby born in space. The KL99 is his status from the Space Academy where he scored 99%. All seven adventures were drawn by Harold Sherman.
The first cover went to the adaptation of Destination Moon, but Chris KL99 opened the issue. His first adventure is "The Menace of the Green Nebula" (Strange Adventures #1, August-September 1950). Chris and his buddies are lured into the Green Nebula by a fake distress call. Unscrupulous types follow them to the planet of the nebula to steal its rich radium deposits. This turns out to be the food of the radioactive men who dwell there. It's up to Chris and his friends to make things right. Fortunately, Chris knows a little science about radium that saves the day.
"The Metal World" (Strange Adventures #3, December 1950) begins with mysterious raiders stealing metal treasures like the Eiffel Tower and Brooklyn Bridge. Chris KL99 and his team find the ion trail of the thieves and follow them to their planet-size spaceship. After being captured, Chris comes up with a scheme that will save earth's treasures and the inhabitants of the Metal World.
"The World Inside the Atom" (Strange Adventures #5, February 1951) has Chris answering a distress call from a miniature universe. Shrinking to microsize, he and his two comrades go to Ruun, a planet that is dying because its sun has gone out, allowing monsters to attack its citizens. The distress call came from Drimos, who turns out to be a tyrant, ruling the people with his artificial light. Chris discovers that Drimos is actually the king's twin, Karthis, and that the true king is imprisoned. He uses his size control to rescue Drimos, but Karthis vindictively destroys the light that holds back the monsters. Chris and his friends grow to immense size and restart the sun by throwing a dead planet into it. Obviously inspired by stories like Henry Hesse's "He Who Shrank" (Amazing Stories, August 1936), the atomic science of this story is quite dated even for 1951.
Up to this point, Chris KL99 had been the headliner of Strange Adventures. By #7 he started to appear later in the issue, and often last. This may indicate that other strips in the magazine were more popular, like the non-series stories by Gardner Fox or "Captain Comet" by Edgar Ray Merritt (John Broome). But more likely, Hamilton was busy with Superman and other, bigger titles.
"The Lost Earthmen" (Strange Adventures #7, April 1951) is Chris KL99's first origin story (this will be changed in future guises). In this episode, we learn why he jumps from planet to planet, exploring deeper and deeper into space. He is on the trail of the Starfarer, a ship his mother and father used to find a new Earth. When they did not return, Chris joined the Space Academy so he could go in search of them. He finds their ship on a remote planet where the survivors remain. His parents died as heroes, saving the doomed ship, hit by an ether-wave. But the survivors are once again in trouble. The ether-wave that made them crash will destroy the planet by drawing a storm of asteroids. Chris and his friends have to hurry, using parts from abandoned ships to repair the Starfarer. His quest now finished, Chris plans to quit space forever. He finds a recording from his father and mother that inspires him anew to carry on exploring the universe.
"The Exile of Space" (Strange Adventures #9, June 1951) is Halk's origin story. As chief scientist of Mars, he ruined the great crystal that pumps the planet's water. He has been searching space for a replacement. This he finds on a world that has sent a distress call. When the three arrive, after a couple of close calls with energy beings and an asteroid belt, they find the local tyrant has several power crystals and uses them to oppress the people. Chris and his friends, using gravity inhibitors (a la Buck Rogers), fly up to one of the crystals and take over. Using that crystal, they blow up the others. As a reward, the people ask Halk to take the last remaining crystal with them. Halk is able to make amends for his mistake, but doesn't give up his life in space.
"The Missing Moon" (Strange Adventures #11, August 1951) starts with a visit to a planet of astronomers who give Chris an interesting photograph of earth. In the picture, there are two moons. Chris begins a quest to find earth's missing moon. He follows a trail in space that leads him to the moon, where a civilization of technology haters arrest him and his friends for sacrilege. He learns that there was once a war between the two moons. Giant energy weapons destroyed the surface of our moon, while thrusting the second moon out of orbit and into the galaxy. Escaping the moon-men, a new problem threatens everyone. A dark star is drawing near and only the projection weapons can save them. Halk and Jero hold off the moon-men long enough for Chris to divert the moon away from the star. He even parks the moon around a warm sun, improving life for the moon people. Shades of Space: 1999!
"The Rival Columbus of Space" (Strange Adventures #15, December 1951) features Shan Kar, a fellow explorer from the planet Zor who is Chris KL99's only rival. Shan Kar decides he will enter a deadly, bell-shaped dark cloud because he thinks a planet lies inside. Chris warns Shan Kar off and everyone thinks he is jealous. Both explorers head out in their own ships. Monsters attack Shan Kar's ship, but Chris saves him, allowing them to arrive at the planet inside. Shan Kar lands, even though Chris warns him again. Shan Kar finds gigantic jewels, but the rays from these cause him to grow to a giant size and unable to return in his ship. Chris has been to the planet before and has devised a metal that can counter-act the rays. He joins Shan Kar on the planet and begins smelting ore to make a covering for the giant. Shan Kar is shrunk back to normal and they all go home. Once home, Shan Kar declares Chris the true "Columbus of Space."
The character of Chris KL99 would live on at DC after its original author was gone. In later comics, his origin was changed and he made several cameos in other titles. But the great days of Edmond Hamilton stand nicely separate from these later changes. Here is space adventure of the simplest, pulpy kind as only "World Wrecker" Hamilton could provide.
GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.
Great spy story with a super cool agent. I like that it's set in the Cold War and I love the heavy use of '80s New Wave music. I even like how the song choices fit with what's going on onscreen ('Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry," for instance, when two characters are trying not to be overheard), but I understand how that might be annoying for some.
The plot is complicated, with a lot of double- and triple-crossing to keep track of, but while I was often kept guessing, I was never confused. And it all tracked for me in the end. Looking back after all the reveals have been made, I have some questions about why certain characters did what they did, but I'm not calling that a flaw until I've been able to see it again with the knowledge of what everyone's up to.
The selling point is the action sequences. There are a few big fights and they're all staged differently and even have different tones from each other. One is a brutal, very prolonged fight in a stairwell, for example, while another in a posh hotel is slow motion and operatic.
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Continuing to rewatch some of my favorite movies from 2016. This was my third or fourth time watching The Magnificent Seven and I like it more each time. I already thought it was a fun movie the first time, but some things that bugged me then don't bother me anymore. It's not that there aren't flaws, it's just that the things that I like - certain characters, set pieces, and the way the villain gets his comeuppance, as examples - smother out the nitpicks that I originally had. It's still not as good as the original, but it doesn't have to be.
Doctor Strange (2016)
One of these days I'm going to need to comprehensively rank the Marvel movies, but I suspect that this will be in the upper part of the middle tier. I enjoy it a lot, appreciate its inventiveness about what spells look like, and like that it opens up a corner of the MCU that hasn't been explored before. I also like how Strange defeats the villain and what that says about him as a character. It's all cool stuff done in a new way.
But even though it's done in a new way, the story that it's telling doesn't feel new enough for me to totally fall in love with the movie. It's essentially Tony Stark's character arc again. And as much as I love Cumberbatch and love him in this role, that sameness keeps me from putting Doctor Strange with very favorite Marvel films.
Moana (2016)
Not just my favorite movie of last year; it's headed towards being one of my favorite movies of all time. There's more to unpack than I want to put in this post, but the short version is that it doesn't just push the nautical/island adventure and awesome female character buttons for me. There's serious, spiritual depth to this movie and a great discussion to be had about mission and identity and how those things are connected. Need to come back to this at some point.
The Ice Pirates (1984)
I've wanted to see The Ice Pirates since 1984. I missed it in the theater and somehow never got around to watching it later, but I've always been a big fan of Robert Urich and of course space opera and pirates, so how could I not enjoy it?
Little did I know.
Maybe I just wasn't in the mood, but as much fun as the cast is (had no idea Angelica Huston and Ron Perlman were in it), it's much sillier than I expected and I didn't actually like any of the characters. Urich is playing the scum bucket that everyone thinks Han Solo is, but without the heart of gold. At least, no heart of gold had been hinted at by the time I gave up and turned this off.
Lady Jane (1986)
So next week, Diane and David and I are taking off for a couple of weeks to go see Britain. It's been a lifelong wish of mine to go see the home of so many of my childhood heroes: Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, Ebenezer Scrooge, Tarzan, James Bond, the Loch Ness Monster... it's a long list.
That means that I won't be updating this blog during that time and there might not be any podcasts with me on them either. If you're with me on Facebook though, I'll be posting there as much as possible, but otherwise, I'll pick up here when we get back.
It also means that we're watching some movies to prep for the trip. Lady Jane has been a favorite of mine since I fell in love with Helena Bonham Carter in the mid-'80s, but it's a downer and I knew David wouldn't love it, so I haven't shared it with him before. We're going to go see the Tower of London, though, and Lady Jane is largely set there and covers an important event that took place there. I figured it would be a good touchstone to have for our visit.
True enough, David wasn't thrilled, though I think he appreciated what he was supposed to about the story. I don't agree with every decision that Jane Grey and her husband make, but I'm not supposed to. They're kids and they make a lot of immature decisions. But I love their passion and I love the questions that the movie raises about how far we're willing to go for things that we believe are important. It kind of goes back to the themes of mission and identity from Moana and I love thinking about that stuff.
When Strangers Marry (1944)
I love me some Robert Mitchum and this has a bunch of other cool people, too. I see Dean Jagger get weepy every year in White Christmas, Kim Hunter went on to play Zira in the Planet of the Apes movies, and Neil Hamilton of course is Commissioner Gordon in the Adam West Batman series. And it's directed by William Castle (House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts).
When Strangers Marry is a good thriller in which Hunter marries a guy (Jagger) she's only known a short time. The cops (led by Hamilton) want to bring Jagger in for questioning about a murder in the last town Jagger was in, but he's doing his best to stay off the grid. Hunter starts to wonder what she's gotten herself into and whether she shouldn't have married her childhood sweetheart (Mitchum) who's recently re-entered her life, instead.
Like I said, it's a good thriller, but it's not great. I was able to predict the outcome, but the bigger problem is that I never for a second believed that anyone would choose to marry Jagger over Mitchum.
Crossfire (1947)
Another early Robert Mitchum movie. I liked this one better though. It's a psychological thriller disguised as a murder mystery. From the start, there are really only a couple of options for who the killer might be, so the real mystery is about the potential motives of the primary suspects. Both are recently discharged soldiers, but one's a hateful bigot and the other is a sweet, but stressed out kid who may not be responsible for all of his actions. Robert Young is the main cop on the case, with Mitchum playing an officer who knows both suspects and wants to prove the kid's innocence.
There's no surprise as to who the killer really is, but that's okay. As the poster's tagline suggests, the movie's more concerned about hate and bigotry. It's heavy handed about delivering that message, but it's also great at humanizing the murder victim and driving home the tragedy of the crime. And sometimes - especially recently - heavy handedness in preaching against hate is exactly what we need.
The Paradine Case (1947)
I'm a big fan of Gregory Peck and Alfred Hitchcock, but I couldn't finish The Paradine Case. Peck plays a married lawyer who falls in love with the woman (Alida Valli) he's defending for murder. The movie hinges on selling the Peck-Valli romance, but that's exactly where it falls apart. Valli is supposed to glamorously mysterious, but she's dull as a mop and there's no reason for Peck to be tempted by her. Especially when his wife (Ann Todd) is utterly charming and far more interesting as a person. The script and performances do no work to transition Peck from happily married to grumpily considering adultery, so when he suddenly and inexplicably started exhibiting feelings for Valli, I was out.
Rio Grande (1950)
The third in John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy." I accidentally skipped the second, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, because I forgot that Rio Grande was part of it. There are way too many Westerns named after rivers, ya'll.
This is a bona fide sequel to Fort Apache. It doesn't reference any of those events - and I'm not even 100% sure that the timeline works out - but John Wayne is playing the same character in both movies. I like how different the two films are, though.
Fort Apache is about authority and the military structure and what happens when good people are given bad orders. Rio Grande is a more personal movie. Some of Fort Apache's themes show up here, too, because Wayne's character once had to carry out a difficult order that directly affected his relationship with his wife (Maureen O'Hara). But Rio Grande is mostly about that relationship, with both characters trying to decide if they want to repair it. Complicating the situation is that their son has enlisted in the army and been assigned to Wayne's command. O'Hara of course wants the boy out, but Wayne's feelings on it aren't so simple.
It's a lovely story of guilt and repentance and the possibility of forgiveness, which doesn't just play out in the family of main characters. There's also a soldier who's wanted for manslaughter, so when the US Marshal shows up to bring him in, the film adds justice to the mix of themes. What role, if any, should the government play in forgiving crimes? Pretty great stuff.
Winchester '73 (1950)
I'm not typically into movies that follow props around. Most of the time they're thinly disguised anthologies and I'm just not crazy about anthologies. But that's not Winchester '73. The characters who come into contact with the rifle are already connected in other ways and none of them leave the story completely unless they die. It's really about Jimmy Stewart's trying to get the rifle, but more importantly - and for reasons unrelated to the rifle itself - get his hands on the guy who stole it. The other characters are clever diversions who weave in and out of that main plot, but all of them are worth the time the movie spends on them.
Song of the Week: "Electric Love" by BØRNS
No one reads this far down, do they?
Comics in the late 1930s and early 1940s were a mixed bag. Having spectacular names, promising great entertainment inside, they were generally collections of stock types from the newspaper comic strips, movies, and radio. Each title had to have its Mandrake knock-off, a jungle lord or lady, a Western hero, a naval hero, etc. Amongst these types was the space hero, usually dressed in a one-piece with a fin on the hood. Sporting a ray gun, he rescued space maidens and thwarted the all-too Asian-looking Martians.
Most of the early science fiction comics are just plain bad. Minor versions of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, they are sadly dated today. It's easy to see why SF historians have written them off as largely irrelevant. Still, they are a weak reflection of what science fiction was in the early pulp years. One comic that I find fascinating in this regard is "Scott Rand and the World of Time" by Otto Binder (writing under the Eando Binder pseudonym) with artwork by his older brother, Jack. The three segments that comprise this masterpiece of silliness appeared in Top-Notch Comics #1-3 (December1939-February 1940).
What makes this particular comic interesting is the timing. Jack Binder had previously written and drawn (as Max Plastid) the "Zarnak" comic for Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1936. After that stint, he drew comics for the Harry A Chesler shop, which "Scott Rand" was produced for. This group of creators wrote and drew comics, then sold them to packagers such as MJL who produced Top-Notch Comics. In many ways, Scott Rand's adventures were a continuation of Zarnak's, featuring similar ships and costumes in color.
Also at the same time, Otto Binder was creating science fiction history at Amazing Stories with his tales of Adam Link, the robot ("I, Robot" had appeared in January of 1939). Goofy by today's post-Asimovian standards, these stories were an important watershed for robot characters. So why was Otto Binder writing script for Harry Chesler? In 1939, there were only three solid and reliable SF magazines: Amazing Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, and Thrilling Wonder Stories. More pulps were on the way, but it was almost impossible to write SF full-time. Otto had to have more markets, and instead of writing Westerns he turned to the pulp's little brother, comics. He would leave Chesler in 1941 to become the top writer of Captain Marvel at Fawcett and later work for DC on the Superman line. Jack Binder left Chesler as well in 1940 to work for Fawcett, Lev Gleason, and Timely, where he worked on the original Daredevil. He would create his own comic shop in 1942 until his retirement.
True to the Flash Gordon formula (which had been around since 1934; earlier if you consider that it stole its inspiration from 1929's Buck Rogers), the team of adventurers in "Scott Rand" has an older, bald, cerebral leader in Dr. Meade. Meade's inventions, such as the time-car, allow our heroes to be heroic. Contrasted to Meade is Scott Rand; young, wavy-haired, blonde, and muscular. Partnered with Thor, a Viking from the year 200 AD, the team has plenty of brawn. Finally, the last member is Princess Elda, who is beautiful and exotic and completely useless, needing to be rescued frequently and acting as cheerleader to Scott or lab assistant to Meade.
The first installment takes Dr. Meade and Scott into the past. They go back to 200 AD and see Vikings attack Rome. The Romans hold their own, killing all but Thor, whom Scott saves. After this, they go to Egypt and save Princess Elda from being sacrificed to the god Ishtar. Dr. Meade, in an unusual show of force, guns the Egyptians down with a machine gun! Putting the time-car in neutral (a phase between time-worlds), Meade teaches the two newcomers how to speak English. It takes a long time but no time at all.
Now the sharp-eyed will notice some stunning errors here. The Vikings as a phenomenon belong to the 10th Century, not the 2nd. Binder has mistaken Goths for Vikings. The "god" Ishtar is actually a Babylonian goddess and was not worshipped by the Egyptians. Otto may have known better, but is writing so fast he doesn't really care. What are a bunch of little kids going to say about it? It only gets better from there. The time-car goes back 10 million years to the time of the dinosaurs! The frisky dinos (one brontosaur looks like it is trying to get intimate with the time-car) are repelled using hand grenades.
In the second part of the story, the crew return to 1940. Thor has a hard time of adjusting, attacking a taxi with his hammer, so Dr. Meade does the only logical thing. He takes them into the future because it is safer. (It's hard to argue with logic like that, but hey, this guy invented time travel.) They land in 2000 AD, in a futuristic New York that is under attack. On a large radio set, they hear that Martians are attacking in a battle fleet. (Here is one of those SF anachronisms that make you smile. Binder can conceive time travel, but not the Internet, or even television for that matter. He's not alone.) Scott and Thor join the military, while Meade goes to work in military intelligence. Elda... well... Elda looks pretty. Scott and Thor are so good at flying fighter ships that the Martians target them, but Scott uses a land gun and takes out the Martian leaders. The time travelers are heroes. (At no time does Dr. Meade suggest they take the time-car into the past and warn the Earth of the impending invasion. Good thing he is a genius.)
The final portion of the tale begins with Dr. Meade and Elda's being captured by Kruzzo the Ice King of Mars. Scott (whose hair is now brown for some reason), Thor, and the unnamed leader of Earth go in pursuit, taking out Kruzzo's pirate fleet near the equator of Mars. Here they learn that not all the Martians are bad, only those working for Kruzzo. The heroes fly to Mars's south pole to infiltrate Kruzzo's base. They sneak in, find the captives, then fight the Martian pirates. Dr. Meade throws a rock into the air apparatus and blows up the baddies while the good guys escape. This last portion seems weaker than the previous two, and no one cried to see the series end here.
So why is "Scott Rand in the World of Time" so bad? Did it not have one of SF's hottest writers at the time? A man who would create Mary Marvel and Supergirl, writing over 50,000 pages of comics in his career? Yes, but "Scott Rand" was early in Binder's career, and written at lightning speed. The comic shops of 1940 pumped out pages at a terrific pace, with little concern for legacy. This was grunt work for low pay. Ideas were stolen, snatched from whatever was hot at the time; whatever was tried and true (though different enough you wouldn't get sued). Even later masters like Will Eisner and Jack Kirby tore through page after page, trying to keep the wolf from the door. The opportunity for greater creativity and care would have to wait until the comics industry abandoned the shop model and replaced it with the bullpens of companies like DC and Marvel. Otto and Jack Binder would make those contributions with Captain Marvel and Superman in the years to come.
GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.
Comics have a great reputation nowadays. The top grossing films are all based on comics: X-Men, Avengers, Spider-Man, Batman, Guardians of the Galaxy, and so on. If you want to sound a little more high fallutin', you can call them "graphic novels," I don't care. Big writers actually brag about writing comics or having a story adapted into comics. This was not always the case.
In fact, it was worse than that. Comics were an infection in science fiction; only slightly less worse than Venusian snot plague. Many SF writers wrote comics, but they didn't brag about it. Henry Kuttner, Manly Wade Wellman, Alfred Bester, Eando Binder, Edmond Hamilton, and Harry Harrison who started out as a comic artist and became a famous SF author. But of all the science fiction comics, there is one that is different. Perhaps especially hated or simply ignored, but unusual. I'm talking about "Zarnak."
"Zarnak?" you ask. Wasn't he a villain in Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane? Nope. Wasn't he a tentacular space monster in Planet Comics? Uh-uh. Wasn't he a Soviet spy who tried to blackmail J Jonah Jameson in Amazing Spider-Man? Never. Zarnak was the only comic character to appear in a science fiction pulp. Not to be inspired by a pulp or to get a comic from a pulp company, but to actually appear in one.
Wonder Stories has a long and complicated history. It began as Air Wonder Stories and Science Wonder Stories, then became just Wonder Stories. All three were owned by Hugo Gernsback. But in 1936, Gernsback gave up the pulp game (at least for a while) and Wonder Stories got bought by the Standard Magazine chain, which changed the name to Thrilling Wonder Stories and placed twenty-one-year-old Mort Weisinger in charge.
Lester del Rey explains the change in his The Worlds of Science Fiction: The History of a Subculture (1977):
"The magazine was no longer the same. It was deliberately slanted to a lower age group, far more frankly designed to use action stories than Astounding had ever been, and it included a comic strip inside it. The comic insert was soon dropped, but it had already helped to give the magazine a bad reputation with the older readers."
First off, you can literally hear the contempt drip off Del Rey's tongue at the words "comic strip." Secondly, you notice that he quickly brushes the strip aside, unnamed, and moves on. Granted he was writing a history of science fiction but the abruptness is as typical as his comparison to the holy grail, John W Campbell's Astounding.
I plan to rectify Mr. Del Rey's omission. That "comic strip" was called "Zarnak" by Max Plaisted, a pseudonym of Jack Binder. (Both Binder and Weisinger have big things to do in comics, but more on that later.) Jack Binder was Earl and Otto's older brother (Jack 1902, Earl 1904, and baby Otto in 1911). Jack was the one who spearheaded the brothers' involvement with comics. Earl and Otto formed "Eando Binder" and went on to write such pulp classics as "I, Robot" before Otto eventually joined the Fawcett Comics team and wrote Captain Marvel and later moved to DC to help create Supergirl. Let's just say that Binders and comics went together.
But back in 1936, with a new juvenile pulp to launch, Mort Weisinger had Jack Binder produce "Zarnak," a cliff-hanger strip modeled on Buck Rogers (that had started in 1929) and Flash Gordon (1934).
Zarnak lives on the Earth of 2936, a planet regressed to medieval superstition after World War 5. Building a rocket plane, Zarnak leaves Earth in search of a spaceship that fled the planet and may have the last remaining scientifically civilized humans left. But Zarnak gets into trouble right away when a meteor plugs his rocket tubes. He is headed into the sun, but lands on the undiscovered first planet, Vulcan. There he finds slugs who eat metal and he uses them to unplug his ship and escape. He crash-lands on Mercury and meets the "crazy ones," beings with large, bulbous heads and are ruled by Thark. Zarnak is sacrificed to a giant bird that takes him to a city on the cold side. This city is inhabited by scientists who want to cut Zarnak up to discover the secret of longer life, because they live for only twenty-four years. Zarnak is saved by the beautiful Etarre, who takes him away in her plane, but they are shot down by Thark who puts them in his new machine that is supposed to separate their souls from their bodies. Zarnak fools Thark into thinking they have been freed, lures him to his ship, straps a jet pack on him, and is rid of the fool. The duo flies to the Hollow Mountain where Etarre betrays him to the Supreme One, giant-headed Vaeco, who wants to burn Zarnak alive. Vaeco relents and explains that he and Etarre are from Venus. Etarre was born looking like an Earthling, so Vaeco fled with her to Mercury, where he rules like a god. Zarnak becomes part of the team. He goes on a secret mission to find a rogue scientist living amongst the "crazy ones," finds their secret generator base, and is attacked from behind...
The strip was dropped and the next installment never appeared.
Let's look at the good and the bad now. On the negative side, the science was very poor. The meteor that plugs the rocket tube is hilarious. Zarnak contemplates jumping out of his ship into space, then quickly remembers this is entirely stupid. The characterization of Zarnak and his enemies is almost non-existent. We assume Zarnak is good because he is human and heroic. We assume the scientists and the crazy ones are bad because they are ugly and alien. Was this any dumber than other SF comics being produced? Not really, for the stories in Planet Comics and even the newspaper strips would make similar faux pas. On the plus side, Jack Binder kept the story moving with an Edgar Rice Burroughs-style pace (remember Thark?) He always managed to come up with a cliffhanger too, which is not as easy as you might think with only three pages an episode. The entire thing comes off as a paper version of a Flash Gordon serial. Not the high standard Lester Del Rey wanted and ultimately, neither did Mort Weisinger. Cancelled after only eight episodes, it is hard to imagine Zarnak had any real influence on science fiction. Unlike Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, Zarnak was quickly forgotten.
Jack Binder must have shrugged off the cancellation. He was moving up in comics. By 1942 he had his own comic mill that employed such future stars as Gil Kane, Ken Bald, Kurt Schaffenburger, and Carmine Infantino. Binder himself penciled many of the Captain Marvel adventures written by his brother Otto. Jack closed the studio four years later, moving into semi-retirement, but continuing to pencil comics for a number of years.
Also to be noted: twenty-one-year-old editor Mort Weisinger would end up at DC in 1941. After a stint in the army, Mort became the man behind Superman and Batman, along with Julius Schwartz. It was Mort and Julius who would lure so many of those old SF writers into the DC fold, having first known them as fanboys publishing fanzines and semi-prozines and finally real pulp titles. Zarnak had come and gone, but the authors of Thrilling Wonder still had much to offer comics, bringing in the better science fictional content we take for granted as part of the DC universe.
GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.
We live in a world that ignores its past. "Everything old is new again" is a kinder way to say it. Even Science Fiction does this. I was reminded of this when I finally got around to reading Jack Williamson's The Legion of Space. Written in 1934 as a serial novel for F Orlin Tremaine's Astounding (the one in between the BEMs of the Clayton Astounding and the Golden Age of John W Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction). The novel offers a roller-coaster ride of wonders, fights, and escapes, as you would expect before things got serious (and frankly often dull) in that "Golden Age." What I hadn't expected was the blueprint for hit after hit of Science Fiction's most popular films.
Star Wars is the most obvious. You have a democracy (The Green Hall) guarded by a small corps of elite warriors (The Legion) who are supplanted by devious means by an evil empire (The Purple Hall). The character of Adam Ulnar is Palpatine, trying to get his weaselly nephew on the new throne. His other kin, John Star, is Luke Skywalker, who refuses to join the dark side and falls in with the Three Musketeers of the tale: Jay Kalam, Hal Samdu, and the ever annoying Giles Habibula. Their job is to rescue the princess from an impenetrable base where she is being tortured for information. The scene where John Star enters her cell is hauntingly familiar. The only thing missing is the line, "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" The bunch escape through the sewers and everybody gets medals at the end.
That's just Star Wars. There's more. The princess in question is Aladoree Anthar, a kind of goddess who possesses a super weapon called AKKA. She's up against the evil race of aliens known as the Medusae who are about to claim the Solar System. Aladoree, who has suffered greatly, is too weary to fight any longer. Only John Star's declaration of love is enough to revive her and to vanquish all evil in the universe. Sound familiar? Leeloo and The Fifth Element. But as they say on television, "Wait! There's more!" The evil Medusae who have invaded Earth with their squidgy tentacles have a giant ship that will kill the heroes. A brave hero (actually that Palpatine stand-in, Adam Ulnar, in a Darth Vader moment of reconciliation) smashes the ship The Purple Dream into the alien vessel, saving everyone. All we need is Randy Quaid's middle finger to finish this scene from Independence Day.
I'm sure there are others. Star Trek. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And it goes to show how we forget. George Lucas based his Jedi on the samurai of Akira Kurosawa's Forbidden Fortress, but he must have read The Legion of Space at some point. As must have Luc Besson. And Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. Or did they? Science Fiction has tropes, motifs and clichés, handed generation to generation, inherited almost on the genetic level, hidden in the canon that is Sci-Fi. The similarities are just so strong I can't quite believe it. Could George Lucas get these ideas second-hand through the Flash Gordon serials he loved as a kid?
I have to shake my head and think that much more of Jack Williamson. The man was influential, important, germane to Science Fiction. He gets mentioned for "With Holded Hands" (a story that has its own legacy as the inspiration for The Terminator series), but SF snobs down-play his more adventurous stuff like The Legion of Space. And it makes us "forget" how important it was. Along with writers like Edmond Hamilton, CL Moore, Leigh Brackett (who wrote The Empire Strikes Back script with Lawrence Kasdan) and EE 'Doc' Smith, Jack Williamson shaped Space Opera into a thoroughly enjoyable form of Science Fiction that fills us with wonder and excitement.
With the explosive appearance of Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 (and the much anticipated return of Star Wars in 2015) Space Opera is back in fashion, zipping and zapping across the cosmos once again. And I think of Jack, whom I was fortunate enough to meet briefly in Vancouver back in 1985, and how he never got the accolades he deserved. But that is also Science Fiction in the old days. Its writers gave willingly, almost feverishly to its cause, and unless you were a complete glory-hog like Isaac Asimov, you didn't get the ticker-tape parade (or the big Hollywood bucks). I try to imagine Jack sitting through the first screening of Star Wars back in 1977 and being filled with both the glory of seeing something he had created forty years earlier jumping across the screen, and also with the knowledge that no one in that audience knew he was the one who accomplished that. Bittersweet reward. Thank you, Jack.
GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.
Author G.W. Thomas is back with the next in his series of articles looking at the great space pulp characters. Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is www.gwthomas.org. He is also editor of Dark Worlds magazine. Thanks for another great article, G.W.!
The author of “Hawk Carse” was one of the Age of Wonder’s great mysteries. Who was Anthony Gilmore? The answer turned out to be Harry Bates and Desmond W. Hall, the editor and assistant editor of the magazine that published Hawk’s four original adventures, Astounding Stories of Super-Science, what fans now call the Clayton Astounding. This magazine was the first to offer Science Fiction as an adventure medium (not a hobbyist magazine like Amazing or the high-brow of Campbell’s Astounding in 1938) for Pulp readers during the Depression era. And the hero of such a magazine would have to be an amazing adventurer.
Living on the Saturnine moon, Iapetus, Hawk roars around the solar system in The Star Devil, the fastest and most up-to-date cruiser. Amongst Hawk’s allies is Friday, the black man rescued from a Venusian slave-ship by Carse, nick-named ‘Eclipse’. He is a muscular and quick-witted friend. Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow (or M. S.) is the scientific mind behind Carse’s modern gadgetry, working away in his secret laboratory to create new and exciting
weapons for Carse to use against his sinister enemies such as Kui Su, the evil
puppet-master behind the criminals of the solar system, master to men like Judd
the Kite. The model for this dastardly villain isn’t hard to spot: Sax Rohmer’s
Dr. Fu Manchu. Along with Rohmer’s good guys and bad guys, Gilmore also
inherited his racial elements, but more on that later.
The first episode in Hawk Carse’s career was the self-titled story “Hawk Carse” (Astounding, November 1931) which details how
Carse’s shipment of Phanti horns, harvested from Carse’s ranch on Iapetus, are
stolen by Ku Sui’s agent, Judd the Kite. But the theft has a more sinister plot
behind it. For when Carse rescues the stolen horns and begins to pursue the
ship of villains who attacked his ranch and killed his people, the voice of
Judd the Kite announces a special doom is coming. The phanti horn has been
infected with a killer fungus that fills the ship with flesh-eating greenery.
Judd the Kite wasn’t interested in the valuable horn but in capturing Carse and
taking his space ship for his own. The pirates return to Iapetus to celebrate
and Carse must do some quick thinking and even quicker shooting to save Friday
from a terrible death. This tale sets up the series well with plenty action,
reversals and host of baddies, but the over-all feel is more of the range than
the spaceways. It isn’t hard to see how Bates and Hall used Western plot
elements to create the tale. As Gene Roddenberry would sell Star Trek thirty years later as “Wagon train to the Stars”, so
too did Anthony Gilmore begin on the farm then look to the stars.
"The Affair of the Brains" (Astounding, March 1932) picks up after the
first story with Hawk and Friday going to keep Judd the Kite’s rendezvous with
Ku Sui. This proves ill-advised since Ku Sui captures them and takes them to
his secret base on an invisible asteroid. Ku Sui uses a weird color machine to
ring information out of Carse, namely the location of his friend, Master
Scientist Eliot Leithgow. For Ku Sui has taken the brains of the galaxy’s top
geniuses and connected them in a special tank. The combined power of these
minds gives him a kind of mental conglomerate that he uses to invent new
creations and to plot his evil schemes. Capturing Leithgow, Ku Sui forces Carse
to watch the operation that will remove his brain. From a seemingly escape-proof
cell Carse and Friday manage to get free, capture the operating room and their
friend Leithgow. Then using the advice of the brains they escape their
barricade, destroy the dome that the asteroid base uses to hold in the
atmosphere, and are blown out into space in spacesuits. The scene of Ku Sui
torturing Hawk Carse seem to be taken right out of a James Bond movie
(something that won’t exist for 30 years) for Bates and Hall were inspired by
Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu, just as Ian Fleming would be years later.
"The Bluff of the Hawk" (Astounding, May 1932) is a short interlude in the saga of Carse and Ku Sui. It begins right after the
events in “The Affair of the Brains”. Using the prototype spacesuits they
escaped in, Hawk, Leithgow and Friday jet back to Satelitte III, landing in a
swamp. Hawk is attacked by a tentacled monster while they sleep after the
arduous journey, fending it off with a ray gun. Carse sends the other two to an
ally nearby while he goes into the city of Porno (unfortunate name choice!) to
retrieve papers Leithgow left behind when kidnapped. On these, in a numerical
code, is the secret location of Leithgow’s lab. What seems a mere notation to
us will be quite clear to a genius like Ku Sui, so Carse desperately needs to get the
papers. Unfortunately they have been taken by a Venusian agent of
Ku Sui. (Venusians are odiferous and Carse is able to logically deduct who has
taken the papers, Lars Tantril, Venuisian drug-dealer and Ku Sui agent). Using
the spacesuit, Hawk flies to Tantril’s ranch, flying low and having to evade
the large flying monsters of Satelitte III. Hawk attacks the base, knocking out
all the guard towers. In the panic he doubles back and finds his way into
Tantril’s inner sanctum and the secret papers. Unfortunately, Lars and the boys
capture him, knocking out the grav plates on his suit and making flying
impossible. Now comes the bluff of the title. While secretly destroying the
incriminating numbers from the paper, Carse suggests to Tantril a trade. He
will explain the single weakness of the drug-dealer’s base if he’ll let him go
free. Neither party is acting in good faith. Tantril agrees but has no
intention of freeing his biggest enemy. Hawk leads the Venusians to the lake
near the base and slowly works his way deeper and deeper until he finds the
drop off. Sealing his suit, he dives to the lake bottom and walks away
laughing.
"The Passing of Ku Sui" (Astounding, November 1932) is the longest and in many ways the weakest of the series. Hawk knows that Ku
Sui will be meeting Tar Lantril at his ranch, giving the Hawk and his friends a
chance to find the invisible asteroid and kill the captured brains. Using a
scanner invented by MS they go to the asteroid, take it over and lay a trap for
the returning Ku Sui. Instead of asking for death the brains want to be placed
in new bodies, so Hawk captures Ku Sui and forces him to operate, for only he
can return the brains to their bodies. An unfortunate sub-plot hinging on race
muddies the story but eventually the brains are placed in new bodies and Ku Sui
is being taken to Earth to clear MS’s name. But Ku Sui escapes to his asteroid,
which is burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, and Carse follows him in a finale in
which the villain dies (but we don’t see it!) and the hero wins. Smell a sequel
here? Working in the Fu Manchu style, the authors have built in an escape route
to allow the baddy to return. This is one of the structural weaknesses that make
the ending unsatisfying.
And so the original adventures of Hawk end with the passing
of his arch-enemy. Or does it? - as they like to say in bad films. In 1942 Hawk
would appear one last time in “The Return of Hawk Carse” (Amazing Stories, July 1942). Written by Harry Bates alone it
appeared in the rival magazine Amazing (because Astounding had
morphed into the top SF market under John W. Campbell and such space opera
would never appear there.) Amazing Stories was no longer the leader in SF but an entertainment magazine much as
the Clayton Astounding had been.
Hawk’s return was not significant enough to earn the cover (which went to
"Blitzkrieg in the Past" by John York Cabot and its dinosaur fighting
a Nazi tank) though the top of the cover bears "THE RETURN OF HAWK CARSE
by Anthony Gilmore". The plot picks up where it left off with the wives of
the scientists who had had their brains transferred being shocked and horrified
by the gross bodies the men now inhabited. There is madness and suicide and
eventually Kui Su shows up to create the Unborn Q, a composite man who
ultimately beats his creator and hustles him off stage like a naughty boy. As Lester del Rey says in The
World of Science Fiction (1979): “…But time
had dimmed the luster. It was no longer the right atmosphere for Hawk Carse.”
The hero of the Great Depression was not the one that a United States at war
required.
Issues plague today’s editors of these old stories: racism,
sexism, old ideas about politics and people. It may have been acceptable in
1931 (even 1942) to feature Asians as “Yellow Peril” villains and Uncle Tom
African-Americans but today these elements cause our teeth to grate and there
is a desire to edit them away. I was faced with this temptation while preparing
the Clayton Astounding reprint series
for RAGE m a c h i n e Books, but with a little thought I paused. Granted
Gilmore’s portrayal is not politically correct by today’s standards, but let’s
consider the other 99% of space opera from that period. How many of these other
stories even contain people of color (except green perhaps)? Very few. If any.
The alternative to racism appears to be completely ignoring the existence of
other races or creeds altogether. This seems to me to be an even worse form of
discrimination. I chose to leave the contents of “Hawk Carse” alone. Readers
are not so inept at distinguishing between current and out-moded attitudes that
we need to treat them as children. Hawk Carse is one of the great adventure
heroes, warts and all. It would be a shame to get only half his story.
I've kept pretty quiet about DC's whole New 52 deal up to now. For better or worse, I don't form opinions quickly, so I gave DC some time to get all their announcements out and respond to the first couple of waves of concerns. I will say that my initial reaction was positive though. I haven't followed DC comics for a couple of years now, so it doesn't affect me personally that they're cancelling everything and starting over. If anything, some of their new series sound really interesting. Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang on Wonder Woman, for instance. Barbara Gordon as Batgirl again, as another example.
My main criticism is that DC seems to be hoping to eat its cake and have it too in regards to balancing current fans with potential, new readers. The New 52's been promoted as an "all-in" approach to reinvigorating the line, while at the same time refusing to call itself a reboot and insisting that fan-favorite stories (an extremely loosely defined category) still count. That's not very "all-in" at all and I suspect that their wishy-washiness will cost them some of those potential, new readers they're wanting.
I don't expect that they'll lose many readers though. As much complaining as fans have been doing, they're still fans. They've stuck with DC through Countdown to Final Crisis; I expect that they'll stick around through this. And it's not like Marvel's got anything especially exciting going on to compete. Yeah, yeah, Marvel still routinely beats DC in sales; all I'm saying is that I don't expect current DC readers to suddenly start switching to Marvel as a result of the "non"-reboot. Whatever you think of DCnU, it's certainly interesting. Marvel, on the other hand, continues to publish the same kind of crossover stuff they've been doing for the last five years. I'm not saying that none of it's good, 'cause some of it really is, but seriously...their section of Previews the last couple of months hasn't been nearly as exciting and expectant as DC's.
I wish I'd thought of this myself, but it was Comics Should Be Good (Robot 6's sister blog at CBR) that came up with the idea of developing your own Marvel 52. I like DC's idea of creating smaller imprints within the DCU (JLA, Batman, Superman, Dark, Edge, etc.). so I used that for my Marvel list too. Not that DC came up with it. Marvel's done the same thing before with Marvel Knights, Tsunami, Marvel MAX, and whatnot. I even used some of those in my list.
Because this could get long, I'm going to divide this up into a series of five posts going into September when DC launches their stuff. That'll give me some room to talk about why I picked the concepts I did as well as the creators I'd love to see work on them. We'll start with a category I call...
Marvel Pulp
The idea behind this "imprint" is to focus on some of the great, not-quite-superhero concepts that Marvel's had over the years: Westerns, jungle adventures, period heroes, spies, and space opera. We'll do this in countdown format, so:
52. Gamora by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Sam Hiti
Gamora's got a lot of history in Marvel's cosmic comics, but the focus on this would be her traveling the universe as an intergalactic bounty hunter. Gamora's extremely hard to kill and has a wicked sense of humor. Kelly Sue DeConnick (Osborn, Supergirl) can deliver the goods on funny (and excitement) while Sam Hiti (Tiempos Finales, Death-Day) knows everything about drawing beautiful women and exotic, alien landscapes.
51. Guardians of the Galaxy by Roger Langridge and Shaun Tan
As fun as a Gamora solo-title would be, we also need a book that can capture the rest of Marvel's cosmic characters like Silver Surfer, Thanos, and Rocket Raccoon. Roger Langridge (Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Snarked!) has the imagination to make that incredible, while Shaun Tan (The Arrival, Tales from Outer Suburbia) has the ability to mix the real and the odd in a unique, believable way. He's not known for action sequences, so I'd be interested to see how he tackled that, but I can already imagine his depiction of the arrival of Galactus and it's mind-blowing.
50. Sabra by Carla Jablonsky and Laurenn McCubbin
Sabra isn't a well-known character, but I've been fascinated by her since I first saw her in The Incredible Hulk #256. Maybe because she took her Israeli heritage so seriously, yet didn't seem to have been created specifically to fill a slot as Israel's Superhero for Contest of Champions or something. She eventually became just another of the many, international mutants running around the X-Men's corner of the Marvel Universe, but I've always thought she was better than that. I'd love to see her in a series that focused on the issues of the Middle East in a thoughtful, objective way. Not that Sabra herself should be objective about them, but that the series could explore the region and its history in a way that educates as well as entertains. Carla Jablonsky's done something similar with Nazi-occupied France in her Resistance series, so I picked her to write. Laurenn McCubbin has a great, realistic style that would complement that kind of story beautifully.
49. Black Widow by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Amanda Conner
I don't know if this was the right thing to do, but though I picked 52 visual artists for my list, I only picked 26 writers and gave them each two books. That was partly because most writers can handle multiple books in a month, but it was also partly to make list-making easier on myself. I'm sure I'll regret it later when I realize I've forgotten one of my favorite writers.
At any rate, this is the second book I'd give Kelly Sue. I promise that I didn't purposely match up women creators with women characters, but it worked out that way in Kelly Sue's case. I'd love to see her write Black Widow. As for Amanda Conner: I love seeing anything she draws, but one look at her variant cover from Secret Avengers #6 above and you'll get why I want her on a Black Widow comic so badly.
48. Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD by James Turner and Luc Jacamon
If you've read James Turner's Rex Librisor Warlord of IO, you know how insanely, awesomely inventive he is. Just the guy to put the "super" back into super spy. And Luc Jacamon (The Killer) knows all about drawing deadly people in diverse settings, both urban and exotic.
47. Mystery Men by Susan Kim and Guy Davis
I really hate not to have David Liss and Patrick Zircher continue the concept they started, but one of the criteria I wanted for my list was to have as many women as possible on it. So I'm giving this '30s-set heroic pulp series to Susan Kim, who did such a great job with her adventurous City of Spiesset in a similar time period. And I'm aching to see Guy Davis do some more stuff like he did on Sandman Mystery Theatre.
46. Tigra by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, and Kerry Callen
The inspiration for this book is two-fold. First, I wanted a jungle comic and Tigra would work great in that setting. She wouldn't have to stay only in that setting, but it would be a great homebase for her.The second inspiration was this description by Kerry Callen of what he wanted in a Tigra series: "a fun-loving character whose cat-like curiosity gets her into interesting predicaments." Pak and Van Lente would be perfect for that and one look at Callen's blog and you know he's the only guy for the visual part of the job.
45. The Savage Land by Joshua Fialkov and Jeremy Bastian
It's another jungle comic, but this one's different from Tigra. Her comic would be much more versatile with lots of guest-stars from other Marvel characters. The Savage Land of coursewould be set exclusively in the prehistoric world beneath Antarctica. At first I thought I'd call it Ka-Zar and Shanna (the first of several two-character comics you'll see in my Marvel 52), but then I remembered the temptation to take those two out of the Savage Land to interact with the rest of the Marvel Universe. Renaming it The Savage Land (which is a much cooler title anyway) removes that temptation.There's a whole world to explore there and as long as I'm fantasizing about my dream comics (as opposed to worrying about sales), I want to keep these characters out of the rest of the Marvel Universe. I don't care if other Marvel characters stop by for a visit, but I want the setting to stay consistent.
Josh Fialkov (Elk's Run, Tumor) does really well with setting and small casts of characters, so I pick him to write. Jeremy Bastian (Cursed Pirate Girl) draws lavishly and I'd love to see the creatures and landscapes he could fill the Savage Land with.
44. The Rangers by Alan Moore and J Bone
Based on another group of characters I once read about in The Incredible Hulk (#265 this time). The Rangers were a goofy team created by Bill Mantlo, but I liked their modern-Western concept and the sheer zaniness of it would be a great playground for Alan Moore. The team included Firebird (probably the most famous character to come out of the team) as well as modern versions of Red Wolf and the original Ghost Rider (renamed Phantom Rider to avoid confusion) and a couple of very Mantlo characters: Shooting Star (her gun shoots stars!) and Texas Twister (tornado powers). In keeping with making the series fun and versatile, J Bone can draw absolutely anything and make it look wonderful.
43. Gunslingers by John Ostrander and Leonardo Manco
Counterpoint to The Rangers, this would be a real Western set in the late 1800s. Really it's just a continuation of Ostrander and Manco's two mini-series, Blaze of Gloryand Apache Skiesin which they updated Marvel's classic, Western heroes for modern fans of Westerns.
