Tarzan 101 | Fan Conventions

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

About half of Griffin's chapter on Tarzan conventions is a lengthy quote from Tarzan of the Apes in which Burroughs describes the Dum-Dum ceremony held by the apes to mark important events. The other half though is full of great information about the real-world legacy of that celebration.

The Burroughs Bibliophiles started their version of the Dum Dum to coincide with the annual World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon). It was at the 18th WorldCon in 1960 that the Bibliophiles held their first meeting and they continued meeting that way for the next 24 years, only meeting at other conventions when WorldCon was held outside the United States.

When Bibliophiles founder Vern Coriell's health became too poor to allow him to continue leading the club in 1984, the Bibliophiles and the Dum Dum went on hiatus, but Burroughs fans didn't give up meeting. British fan (and pen pal of Burroughs) Frank Shonfeld started the Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship, originally a network of letter-writers, and ECOF held its first, formal meeting in Toronto in August 1984.

Though ECOF continues meeting to this day (this year's was in May in Morris, Illinois), when George McWhorter restarted the Burroughs Bibliophiles he also reinstituted the annual Dum Dum, though as a separate event from WorldCon. ERBzine has a wonderful timeline of meeting dates and locations that even includes some short anecdotes from various gatherings. This year's Dum Dum was held in Louisville, Kentucky on August 8-11.

One of the major activities at the Dum Dum each year is bestowing awards. The Golden Lion Award is commonly given to professional creators and actors who've contributed in some way to Burroughs' legacy. The Edgar Rice Burroughs Achievement Award is given to prominent fans for their efforts in keeping alive the author's memory. The Dum Dum has also honored significant contributors to Burroughsdom like Hal Foster, Frank Frazetta, Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, Harlan Ellison, and Philip Jose Farmer.

Visitors to the Tapajós hate cephalopods

By Leo Morey [via Pulp Covers].

By the way, I'm never calling anything scifi again. From now on, it's "scientifiction."

31 Werewolves | The Wolf Man

Universal's Werewolf of London didn't do nearly as well as their other monster movies in the early '30s, so they tried again in 1941 with The Wolf Man. Jack Pierce returned to create the werewolf's look and outdid his previous effort by a large margin. The London werewolf was good, but the Wolf Man's was iconic.

Frame for frame, The Wolf Man is simply a better movie than its predecessor. The script is doing something original instead of just tacking in a bunch of tropes from other successful monster movies. Instead of making the lead character yet another mad scientist, The Wolf Man offers Lon Chaney Jr. in the best performance of his career as the tragic and sympathetic Larry Talbot. He may be heir to a powerful English estate, but he's the second son and hasn't been bred to the role. Instead, he's studied engineering in the United States and comes across as a normal working joe who's thrust into an unfamiliar - and ultimately horrifying - situation. That gives the film tons of gravitas to build on, where Werewolf of London was a more simple fantasy.

The Wolf Man is more sophisticated in how it approaches its themes too. Werewolf of London borrowed heavily from Jekyll and Hyde, making its Dr. Glendon a severely repressed man who had to turn into a monster to cut loose and run wild. Larry Talbot isn't like that. He's a relaxed, affable fellow who - if his early interaction with Evelyn Ankers' character is any indication - could do with some additional social graces.

It's that American wildness that gets him into trouble though when he returns home after the death of his older brother. The people in the village never do trust him and even his father (Claude Rains, in my favorite ever role of his) has to make an adjustment. The Wolf Man shows this right away when Sir John tells Larry that he'd like to put away the dishonest formality that's kept them from getting to know each other. Talbot Village is characterized by old world manners and (as Sir John puts it later) black-and-white thinking.

What's strange is that The Wolf Man subtly endorses the villagers' simple-mindedness by making werewolfism a symbol for free-thinking. It's a weird message, but Sir John characterizes the ability to think deeply as a curse. Seeing shades of gray in the world is its own form of wildness and Sir John believes that it may be what's causing his son's mental breakdown. Getting ready to go to church, Sir John goes so far as to characterize faith as a useful defense against overthinking.

This odd theme makes a little more sense remembering that the film was made just before the U.S. entered World War II. Is it possible that the film is saying that the U.S. has been overthinking its role in the world and that sometimes we just have to pick a side and act? It's true that too much freedom - of thought and of action - can be crippling. Faced with too many choices, the chaos becomes overwhelming and we need rules and order to define limits so that we can act. Without that, society doesn't work.

If that's the point that The Wolf Man is making, it's surprisingly complex for a Hollywood monster movie, but that may be why it's such a classic.

31 Scares of Casper #3

I'll be at FallCon this weekend!

I'll be at FallCon this weekend at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, so if you're in the area, please come by and say "hi." And meet Mark Waid while you're at it.

I'll have copies of Kill All Monsters as well as the Avenger anthology I contributed to, but even if you don't need those, I hope you'll stop by and chat.

Conquering men hate cephalopods

By George Gross [via Pulp Covers; suggested by Shad Daly]

31 Werewolves | Werewolf of London

1941's The Wolf Man may be Universal's most famous werewolf movie, but it wasn't their first one. That would be 1935's Werewolf of London, which is also the first Hollywood werewolf movie period.

Unfortunately, Werewolf of London borrows a lot of elements from other popular Universal monster movies. Henry Hull is doing a good Colin Clive impression as Wilfred Glendon, an obsessed doctor married to the understanding, but impatient Lisa (Valerie Hobson). Hobson played a similar role as Elizabeth to Clive's mad scientist in Bride of Frankenstein that same year. And then there's Warner Oland, during the height of his Charlie Chan popularity, putting on the yellow-face again to play the enigmatic Dr. Yogami, a Van Helsing-like character who knows a lot about werewolves if only someone would believe him.

Werewolf of London also borrows from a classic, non-Universal monster movie: 1931's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Doctor Glendon owes a lot to Jekyll. They're both serious scientists, but good men with devoted servants and loving women in their lives. They're also both afflicted with curses that cause them to lose control and indulge their passions, which leads both of them to sneak out of their labs through secret entrances and take up residences in shady parts of London. The Jekyll/Hyde story has a lot in common with werewolf themes and Werewolf of London makes a lot of use of that.

Even though Werewolf of London rehashes a lot of '30s monster movie tropes, it's still an enjoyable film. Hobson is especially strong and less understanding of Glendon's lying and sneaking about than she is of Clive's in Bride of Frankenstein. When Lisa's old boyfriend (who also, conveniently happens to be the nephew of a big shot at Scotland Yard) shows up, she renews her friendship with him over Glendon's objections. There's never any hint that she's fooling around with the other guy, but she's not going to let her husband tell her what to do when he's obviously hiding something. Good for her.

The sets and tone of Werewolf of London are also very good, especially the large estate that's the setting for the film's climax. And the werewolf makeup is excellent. Jack Pierce designed it and though it's not as complex as what Pierce came up with six years later for The Wolf Man, it's still very effective and Hull does nice things with it.

31 Scares of Casper #2

Mermaids hate cephalopods

By Anna Verhoog. [Suggested by Shad Daly]

31 Scares of Casper #1

Back by "popular" demand.

I love the monster-cereal badges that the official Countdown to Halloween site came up with this year. When I saw them, I thought that the most appropriate one for my werewolf theme would be Fruit Brute, but that's neither one of my favorite cereals nor one of my favorite General Mills monsters. So I went with Boo Berry, knowing that Casper would tie him in nicely.

31 Werewolves | The Big Bad Wolf

Art by Gustave Doré

It's October! And like so many other blogs this month, I'm celebrating the Countdown to Halloween.

If you're not familiar with Countdown to Halloween, it's a marathon in which bloggers celebrate the spookiness of the holiday for the whole month of October. Literally anyone with a blog can join; just click the link above for details.

This is my fifth year participating. In 2009, I highlighted my 31 favorite monsters (Scary Clowns continues to be one of my most popular posts to this day, for some reason). In 2010, I talked about my 31 favorite things about the holiday itself. Then, in 2011, I drilled down into my all-time favorite monster for 31 Days of Frankenstein. As soon as I did that, I knew I had the next two years mapped out, so last year, I spent 31 Days with Dracula and this year I'm completing the unholy trinity.

The thing about the trinity though is that it's based on the most popular Universal monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolf Man. Since Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula are based on public domain characters, it's easy to spend a month exploring different versions of them, but that's not true with Lon Chaney Jr.'s Larry the Wolf Man. So starting this year, I've got to go more general and look at werewolves as a whole. The exciting thing about that for me is that it opens up all sorts of possibilities for future Countdowns: 31 Ghosts, 31 Witches, etc.

Unlike 31 Days of Frankenstein and Dracula (where I wanted to provide as complete an historical overview as I could of those characters), for 31 Werewolves I'm limiting myself to just 31 specific versions. These aren't the 31 most important or even my 31 favorites, though many important and favorite ones will appear. For some of them, I let their prominence in pop culture override historical importance and my own taste. I also wanted to hit a variety of media, so I left out some great movie werewolves in order to fit in some literary, comics, and even musical versions. Feel free to yell at me if I leave out something I shouldn't have. I'm gonna hit them in chronological order, so you'll know when I've moved past something I should've mentioned. If I get enough complaints about a particular thing, I may circle back and add it as an extra.

To kick things off, I had to start with "Little Red Riding Hood." It's not the oldest werewolf story (those appear in ancient Greece), but it's the most popular, longest-enduring one. The well-known version that appears in children's books features a talking wolf instead of an actual werewolf, but the earliest versions often had a werewolf or an ogre as their villains and it's likely that the werewolf eventually became an anthropomorphic animal.

The story is all about the danger of the Wild and that's essentially what werewolves are about too, so it's a natural fit. I imagine I'll have more to say about wildness and control as the month progresses, so I don't want to shoot that arrow too soon, but it's what fascinates me most about these creatures.

I've included a werewolf version of the story from France below. If you want to read other versions though, including those by Charles Perrault (the first to write down and publish the story) and the Grimm Bros., D. L. Ashliman's folktexts has you hooked up.

There was a woman who had made some bread. She said to her daughter, "Go and carry a hot loaf and a bottle of milk to your grandmother."

So the little girl set forth. Where two paths crossed she met the bzou [werewolf], who said to her, "Where are you going?"

"I am carrying a hot loaf and a bottle of milk to my grandmother."

"Which path are you taking?" said the bzou. "The one of needles or the one of pins?"

"The one of needles," said the little girl.

"Good! I am taking the one of pins."

The little girl entertained herself by gathering needles.

The bzou arrived at the grandmother's house and killed her. He put some of her flesh in the pantry and a bottle of her blood on the shelf.

The little girl arrived and knocked at the door. "Push on the door," said the bzou. "It is blocked with a pail of water."

"Good day, grandmother. I have brought you a hot loaf and a bottle of milk."

"Put it in the pantry, my child. Take some of the meat that is there, and the bottle of wine that is on the shelf."

While she was eating, a little cat that was there said, "For shame! The slut is eating her grandmother's flesh and drinking her grandmother's blood."

"Get undressed, my child," said the bzou, "and come to bed with me."

"Where should I put my apron?"

"Throw it into the fire. You won't need it anymore."

And for all her clothes - her bodice, her dress, her petticoat, and her shoes and stockings - she asked where she should put them, and the wolf replied, "Throw them into the fire, my child. You won't need them anymore."

When she had gone to bed the little girl said, "Oh, grandmother, how hairy you are!"

"The better to keep myself warm, my child."

"Oh, grandmother, what long nails you have!"

"The better to scratch myself with, my child!"

"Oh, grandmother, what big shoulders you have!"

"The better to carry firewood with, my child!"

"Oh, grandmother, what big ears you have!"

"The better to hear with, my child!"

"Oh, grandmother, what a big nose you have!"

"To better take my tobacco with, my child!"

"Oh, grandmother, what a big mouth you have!"

"The better to eat you with, my child!"

"Oh, grandmother, I have to do it outside!"

"Do it in the bed, my child!"

"Oh no, grandmother, I really have to do it outside."

"All right, but don't take too long."

The bzou tied a woolen thread to her foot and let her go. As soon as the little girl was outside she tied the end of the thread to a plum tree in the yard.

The bzou grew impatient and said, "Are you doing a load? Are you doing a load?"

Not hearing anyone reply, he jumped out of bed and hurried after the little girl, who had escaped. He followed her, but he arrived at her home just as she went inside.