A BITTER PILL

 Well that didn't go the way I had hoped or expected.  Rightly or wrongly, it appears the people have spoken and I must accept the result with grace and compassion.  I will, however, be a voice of the loyal opposition for however long democracy lasts.

YOUNGER THAN SPRINGTIME...

Happy birthday to TRACYK at the always interesting blog Bitter Tea and Mystery!

OVERLOOKED FILM: BLACK MAGIC (1944)

 This is a Charlie Chan film featuring Sidney Toler which I watched last week, and it may be in the running for the worst Charlie Chan film ever made.  (I can't say definitely because I have never watched all of them.)  The film was later retitled Murder at Midnight

Sidney Toler is execrable in the role of the famed Honolulu detective.  Mantan Moreland bugs his eyes out as he does his stereotypical stick.  Joseph Crehan and Ralph Peters play the bumbling police officers.  

In addition to Mantan Moreland as Birmingham Browm, Chan's assistant here is played by 18-year-old Frances Chan, whose character is coincidently named Frances Chan.  The actress was a model and this was her first and only major role in films.  Her other two roles was as "Youngest Chan Daughter" eleven years earlier in Charlie Chan's Greatest Case, and as "Chinese Girl Prisoner" in 1945's Samarai.  She married and retired from films in 1945; judging from her acting chops in Black Magic, this was probably a good thing.

A phony psychic is shot dead at a seance by a "nonexistent" bullet.  One suspect at the seance is Charlie's daughter, forcing Charlie to take on the case.  The acting ranges from terrible to adequate.  The set design is cheap, flimsy, and unbelievable. The costuming is atrocious.  The plot is helter-skelter, jumping around without rhyme or reason and avoiding mentioning important things.  The plot (what there is of it) does, however, rely on some imaginary scientific things that just don't exist. The writing is so hurried that at least one suspect on the scene is completely ignored because they just didn't have time to explain who she was, what she was doing there, and what her motive could have been.  All other motives given were paper thin.  The actual motive (and the clue to solving the case) is not mentioned or hinted until the murderer is caught.  In fact, there is no detection in this mystery at all.

It's hard to find a single moment in the one hour four minute run time that is not a mess.  You can blame the director, Phil Rosen, or you can blame the writer, George Callahan, or you can blame the studio, Monogram Pictures, for carrying on the Charlie Chan franchise way beyond its shelf date.  But blame is not the proper attitude to take here.  Pity is.

Judge for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkF0Lf6kp_Y

HYMN TIME

 Audrey Assad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY5o9mP22V0

NEW COMICS #1 (DECEMBER 1935)

We're taking a deep dive into comic book history with this one.  New Comics was a continuing comic magazine and the second continuing title for DC Comics (back then it was the National Allied Newspaper Syndicate, Inc., headed by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, the legendary pulp writer and comic book pioneer.  It was the company's first half-tabloid size magazine, now the standard size for comic books.  New Fun changed its title to New Adventure Comics  with issue #12 (January 1937); another title change, this time to Adventure Comics, came in November 1938 with issue #32.  As Adventure Comics it ran until October 2011, with issue #529.

Over the years, the comic book blazed its way through the Golden Age with stories about Aquaman, Hour Man, Green Arrow, Manhunter, Sandman, and Superboy, among others; through the Silver Age, adding stories about Congarilla, the Legion of Super Heroes, Tales of the Bizarro World, Aqualad, Black Canary, Black Orchid, Doctor Mid-Night, Martian Manhunter, Spectre, Supergirl, and Zantanna; and through the late Bronze Age with Dial H for Hero, Plastic Man, and Starman; a brief spell as a digest magazine saw stories about the challengers of the Unknown and Shazam; while the lasr few issues included a relaunch of Atom.

But all that was in the future.  New Comics -- the International Picture Story Magazine #1 promised "eighty pages packed and jammed with new comics features, written and drawn especially for New Comics -- never printed before anywhere.  Here is a magazine of picturized stories chock full of laughter and thrills, comic characters of every hue, knights and Vikings of ancient days, adventuring heroes, detectives, aviator daredevils of today and hero supermen of the days to come!"

Let's take a look at the initial line-up, shall we?

• "Now --When I Was a Boy --"  Finding a horseshoe used to be considered lucky, but that's not the case for Uncle Chris in this attempt at humor.
• "Sir Loin of Beef" by R. G. Leffinwell.  Our hero gets ousted by a tavern maid.  Another humor attempt.
• "Axel."  A filler to make you say "huh?"
• "Billy Kid."  Young Billy sends Pudge off on a ride in his soap box car, neglecting to tell him the steering doesn't work.  They had a strange kind of humor in 1935.  A contomuing feature.
• "The Vikings" by Livingstone.  King Harald sails off to war and Sigrid gives birth to his child. Sigrid's father ordered that the boy be left in the woods with a piece of salt pork in his mouth for the wolves.  The babe is found by Kol the Wise, who slays the wolves, as Odin's ravens, Hugin and Munin fly overhead.  To be continued.
• "J. Worthington Blimp, Esq." by Sheldon Mayer.  Two episodes.  Blowhard J. Worthington gets his comeuppance.  A continuing feature.
• "The Tinker Twins at Penn Point."  Hijinks at a military school involving a billy goat.  A one-and-done feature.
• "Sawbones, C.O.D." by Joe Archibald. A text story from a well=known pulpster.  "They were just a pair of saddle tramps and they chewed the dust of the Powder River range.  Yrs, those two old favorites of the cattle country are with us again."
• "It's Magic" by Andrini the Great.  Text article.
• "Petey the Pup" by Constance Narr.  Text story.  "A story of the wintry day and the real young readers...pictures by the author"  (I hope she didn't give up her day job.)
• "Needles" by Al Stahl.  In "Needles Uses His Noodle," he builds a hair-cutting machine, with the expected results.  A continuing feature.
• "Dizzy and Daffy" by Bo Brown.  One-panel cartoons.
• "17-20 in the Black" by Billy Weston. How Jim Gale ends his gambling career to follow a more useful life.  Two episodes, the second has the true title "17-20 on the Black."  Oopsie!  To be continued.
• "Just Suppose.." by H. C. & A. D. Kiefer.  So what if the Gauls had destroyed Rome, or if Charles Goodyear gave up before developing rubber?  Points to ponder.
• "Cartoon Corner."  How to draw cartoons, starting with using pen lines and cross-hatching.
• "Puzzle Adventures" by Mat Curzon.  Solve this puzzle with "the pixies."
• [untitled humor story]  Stereotypical Mexican wants some watermelon.  Not as offensive as it could be, I suppose.  This one-pager was repeated on the next page.  Whoopsie!
• "Gulliver's Travels," originally related by Jonathan Swift and drawn by (oh frabjous day!} Walt Kelley, as "Walter C. Kelley."  This one covers the voyage to Lilliput.
• "Freddie Bell, He Mans Well" by Matt Curzon.  Young Freddie gives up his seat on the subway to a fat woman, irritating the other passengers; then Freddie mistakes a prosperous gentleman for a panhandler.
• "Sister and Brother" by Emakear [I may have gotten the artist wrong; the signature is hard to decipher}.  Part of the "Junior Section For Younger Folks" of the comic book.
• "Bunco the Bear" by Dave Ruth.   More of the "Junior Section."
• "The Travel Twins"  A cut-out fashion for Gretchen the Dutch girl.  "Young ladies ---Try these cut-outs."
• "Fun for All -- A Test of Eye and Wit"  A coloring page (use pencil, crayon, or water colors), with a poem that has blank spaces for you (yes, YOU!) to guess the colors that rhyme.
• "Wing Walker" by Thor.  We're out of the "Junior Section" now, kiddos.  He's a test pilot who has been grounded on trumped-up charges.  He's been kidnapped by the "Sons of the Red Cormorant" to fly a load of weapons south.  attacked by the St. Louis mob and with his engine on fire, wing lands in the Everglades, where he meets a girl who has just escaped from the Seminoles.  There's a lot of bull-tikky and stereotyping to unpack here, but we will just have to wait because the story is continued in the next issue.
• "Cap'n Spinniker" by Tom Cooper.  Another attempt at humor.  Spinnaker attempts to drill up to the North Pole from a submersible and runs into both his nemesis and a sperm whale.
• Stamps and Coins."  Text article, focusing on an Ethiopian stamp.
• "Hobbies" by Danny Ryan (who has spent eighteen years studying hobbies).  A text article, this time on felt handcraft.  Readers are asked to pick what hobbies they wish to discuss112 hobbies to choose from. in future issues, and are given a list of 112 hobbies (phew!) to choose from.
• "Sports."  Another text article.  "Timely comments on the athletic question; Are big schools going high hat?; What is the right age?"
• "They Started Young" by Joe Archibald.  One page comics feature on early starters Bobby jones, Wilcox, Junior Coen, and Helen Wills
• "Worth-While Films to Watch For" by Josephine Craig.  Text article.  Message to Garcia, Under Two Flags, Captain Blood, The Story of Louis Pasteur, Frisco Kid, Typee, Captains Courageous, O'Shaughnessy's Boy, Robin Hood of El Dorado, Mother Lode, Prairie Schooner, and Angel of Mercy.
• "The Bookshelf," reading with Connie Naar.  Indian Brothers by Hubert V. Coryell, The Cove Mystery (they may have meant The Cave Mystery) by S. S. Smith, Radio by John Langdon-Davies, Tin-Can Craft by Edwin T. Hamilton, The Box of Delights by John Masefield (at last!  a book I have heard of and can recommend), Louis Untermeyer's poetry anthology Rainbow in the Sky, The Good Master by Kate Seredy, Red Sky by Theodore Arland Harper, Young Walter Scott by Elizabeth Janet Gray, Moviemakers by John J. Floherty, and -- one more that I know -- Babar the King by Jean de Brunhoff.
• "The Radio Dialer."  A brief article mentioning Bobby Benson's Mickey of the Circus, as well as Let's Pretend and Billy and Betty.
• "Captain Quick" by John  Elby.  London, 1586:  Kendal quick refuses to join Lord Barlow on a privateering expedition against the Spanish.  Some consider him a coward but he is really out to catch two spies bent on destroying Barlow's ship.   Quick goes on for a long career in the comic book.
• "Jibby Jones" by Vin Sullivan.  More (ahem) humor.  Jibby's mother leaves him some money to get a haircut, but Jibby really wants an ice cream sundae.
• "The Strange Adventures of Mr. Weed" by Sheldon Mayer.  Historian Oliver Weed has a change to go back to any point in time with a new time machine.  Two episodes.  A continuing series.
• "Ray and Gail" by Clem Getter.  On her deathbed, Ray's mother makes him promise to take care of his twin sister.  So now they as "On the Trail of Life's Adventures" as slick-talking Willie Gewgaw convinces to two join him on the Gewgaw boat expedition to a secret destination.  to be continued.
• "Allan DeBeaufort."  The saga of a crusader who rode with the hordes of Genghis Khan.  Evidently a one-and-done.
• "Dickie Duck" by Matt Curzon.  A simple task of watering flowers goes astray.
• "Peter and Ho-lah-an" by Liv.  Peter, who has a dog named Rab and a ram named Loki, meets an Indian boy named Ho-lah-an Morango, who teaches him how to make a lasso of wire grass to catch lizards.  A continuing series.
• "It's a Dern Lie," as told by G. W. Falcon of Evanston, Illinois.  Come up with a whopper and have a chance to win $1.00.  This time, great-grandfather Utah Falcon creates the Great Salt Lake.
• And on the back cover is an ad for a real, lifelike Shirley Temple Doll, in three sizes (13 inches, 18 inches, or 22 inches) for a very low price ($2.98, 44.98. and $7.49, respectively).  Don't delay!

Well, they said this issue was jam-packed.  I guess they were right.

Enjoy.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pK-Azj-B5IRbBM67skYDyD8ZtpLWpkpb/view

SHOULD THIS BOOK BE FORGOTTEN? -- MURDER ISLAND

Murder Island by James Petterson and Brian Sitts  (2024)

Certainly not a forgotten book.  Definitely not an old book; it was published last month.  But part of me is thinking it really should be forgotten.  Not that it's a bad book, per se.  It's just that it feels like a fraudulent book to me.  It's a Doc Savage novel.  Except, of course, it isn't.

M ore years ago than I care to remember, I worked in a department store, and one day we had a new general manager.  He wanted the whole world to known that there was a new boss in town, that things were going to be different.  So the first day he was on the job, he reversed the escalators -- the UP escalators became the DOWN and the DOWN escalators became the UP.  That way, both staff and customers knew at once that things were different.  I cant say that during his tenure things improved at the store, but he felt he had made a point.  And, I suppose, he felt good about that. 

Have you ever watched a television show and liked it, and then someone new was put in charge and they changed the whole nature of the show?  Changed the concept, changed the location, shifted or eliminated some well-loved characters, altered the motivation of the main characters, or in some way altered the show just to show they are now in charge, and its their  vision you are now watching and not the previous guys.  I'm sure you have, and I'm pretty sure you weren't impressed.  But, no matter.  the new guy has marked his territory and that's what counts.

Doc Savage has been a staple of popular culture for over ninety years.  As one of the most famous pulp magazine characters, he has gone through 181 adventures.  He has been immortalized though comics, a radio program, a feature movie, and a "biography."  An additional 23 new Doc Savage novels have been published in recent years, most written by pulp historian Will Murray.  Doc Savage has a strong and recognizable legacy.

Doc is Clark Savage, Jr., a man who has been raised by his father to be the ultimate human being -- strong, athletic, and brave, with an intellect that outshines others in many various fields.  Doc Savage is dedicated to righting wrongs, to helping the helpless, to be a positive light in the world.  His vast wealth comes from a hidden South American mine (gold, maybe, perhaps diamonds -- I can't remember).  He has five loyal assistant, each tops in their respective fields.  His beautiful cousin Pat sometimes joins him on his adventures.  And what adventures!  He fights supervillains, wannabe dictators, vicious gangs, mad scientists, and presumed supernatural foes -- it's all in a day's work for Doc and his gang.

And then there's James Patterson and Brian Sitts's Doc Savage.  This one id Brandt Savage, the grandson of the original Doc.  He's a mild-mannered professor of archaeology (shades of Indiana Jones!) who has been coopted and trained by the beautiful Kiri Sunlight.  Kiri's training over a six-month period has made him almost as superhuman as his ancestor.  They fought some deadly fores, then Doc opted out and went back to teaching and did not see Kiri for a year.

No Kiri is back and Doc realizes that he has loved her all this time.  But there are some highly trained Russian assassins after her (and, it turns out, after Doc as well).  And things go from bad to worse.  and now it's time for a bit of backstory.

It seems that Doc Savage had a twin brother, Cal, who got the short end of the stick from their father.  Doc got the training and the glory and Cal got bupkis.  So Cal turns evil.  He teams up with Doc's most dangerous foe, John Sunlight, to form a secret Russian assassin training camp.  (Not that the Russians necessarily knew about this.)  The training camp gets more secret and more deadly as the years pass.  Kiri -- the great granddaughter of John Sunlight -- was born into this camp and had been trained as one of their most effective agents, but she soon had enough and broke out of the camp and disavowed its ways.  Now she loves Doc, but doesn't really talk about her past.  Doc does not know he has a third cousin, Cal Savage IV, who now runs the assassin facility and is planning to take over the world through fomenting wars all over the globe.  Cal realizes that if anyone is capable of putting paid to his plans, it's Doc and Kiri. so he keeps trying to kill them.

In Petterson and Sitts's Doc Savage universe, the original Doc was  sort of a dick, just as likely to murder his foes than not.  He also does not have his gang to back him up.  what he does have are all sorts of plans for secret weapons he has invented, many of which will not be even thought of for decades.  Their original Doc still  fights for what is right, but much of his reputation is hearsay or overstated. 

There's also a psychotic descendant of king Leopold of Belgium, who is planning to regain his ancestor's hold on the Congo.  A few pirates here and there.  A copper mine in Tanzania being worked on by slave labor.  A Somali militia.  A secret yacht that has not docked in over ten years and which avoids normal seaways.  An assassin almost as sexy as Kiri.  And a jewel-encrusted scimitar that Doc keeps with him that really serves no purpose in the plot except to slaughter a group of children so doc can be blamed for their murders.

This is a real hodgepodge of a plot that does not stand close examination.

My main point is that, if this is a Doc Savage novel, it's a mess.  If it did not pretend to be a Doc Savage novel and was presented as a somewhat wild, fanciful, coincidence-laden thriller, it could be ranked somewhere above being merely passable.

But for some reason Patterson and Sitts decided to put their own stamp on the Doc Savage mythology, marking their territory, if you will.  And that, in my humble opinion was a big mistake.

Oh.  And about that title.  I think it refers to an atoll that takes up a minor part of the book -- about forty pages, less than a quarter of the way in.

AN OLD-TIME RADIO PROGRAM FOR HALLOWEEN: THE ASH TREE (APRIL 18, 1963)

 The Black Mass was a production of listener supported  KPFA Berkey and the Pacifica Network.  The show was the concept of KPFA Drama & Literature Director Jack Nessel, who worked with Erik Bauersfeld, a professor of aesthetics and philosophy at  the California School of fine Arts, as a vehicle for showcasing tales of the supernatural from authors not that well known in the field and, perhaps better known in other fields.  Among the authors showcased were Walter de la Mare, J. Anthony West, Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, Nicolai Gogol, Thomas Mann, John Collier, Henry James, Lord Dunsany, Virginia Woolf, and Saki.  authors more generally associated with horror included Edgar Allen Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce, and M. R. James.  The stories were adapte4d by Bauersfeld, then Bauersfeld would be recorded (at times assisted by other actors) by KPFA Production Director John Whiting;  Whiting and Bauerfeld would then grab whatever studio time they could to assemble each episode, often working long into the night -- a low budget operation, remember -- they did not even have access to multitrack recording equipment.  You can judge the results for yourself.

In 1690, the English county of Suffolk was wracked by a fear of witches.  One of those suspected was a wealthy noblewoman names Mrs. Mothersole.  Her sole accuser was Sir Matthew Fell, who claimed to have seen her climbing a huge ash tree on moonlit nights and snip off branches with a dagger; the woman also made he escape before Fell could catch her.  Mrs. Mothersole was tried, found guilty, and hung.  Before she died, she stated, "There will be guest at the Hall."  Later a creature was pied among the branches of the tree, but it escaped.  A few days later, Sir Aatthew is found dead in his bed, a look of sheer terror on is face.

Fast forward to 1735, Sir Matthew's son an heir has died and to make way for his body in the graveyard, old Mrs. Mothersole's grave is exhumed, only to find the coffin empty.  The new heir is Sir Richard.  He spends the night in the bedroom where Sir Matthew had died and was disturbed by scratching at his window.  He presumed it to be the branches of the ash tree...but they do not reach that far.  the next night, something climbs through the window, bites Sir Richard, and kills him.

Soon townspeople discover the secret of the tree, and it is much more horrible than they could imagine...

The story was first published in James's collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904).  Many critics and readers alike feel that James was the finest author of ghost stories in the English language.  

"The Ash Tree" is a fitting tale for this Halloween. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKOiKXmyktM