SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE #2 (CANADIAN EDITION) (MAY 1938; BUT DON'T BELIEVE IT)

This one gets a bit confusing, and not just because the contents description at the link is for an entirely different comic book.  And, although the link says the issue is from May 1938, this actually seems to b=e a reprint of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #6 from Spring 1950.

Sheena was basically a female version of Tarzan.  Sheena is the young daughter of Cardwell Rivington, an African explorer who died after accidentally drinking a magic potion.  she was then raised by the witch doctor Kobo, who taught her the ways of the jungle and several African languages.  Sheena is skilled with knives, bows, and spears, and is able to communicate with animals.  As an adult, she becomes the Queen of the Jungle and acquires a pet monkey named Chim.  Sheena's "mate" is white safari guide Bob Reynolds (his last name changes over the years).  According to comics historian Jess Nevins, over the years Sheena has battled "hostile natives, hostile animals, giants, a super-ape, the 
Green Terror, saber-tooth tigers, voodoo cultists, gorilla-men, devil-apes,  blood cults, devil queens, dinosaurs, army ants, lion men, lost races, leopard-birds, cavemen, serpent gods, vampire-apes, etc."  Suffice it to say, Sheena is one tough lady.

Sheena is modeled in part on Rima, the Jungle Girl, from William Henry Hudson's 1904 novel Green Mansions.  According to Will Einsner, who has been credited with creating the character with Jerry Iger, Sheen=a's name was derived in part from H. Rider Haggard's novel She; Iger disputed this, saying that Eisner was not involved in the character's and that he got the idea from the word "sheenie," a derogatory term for Jews.  (Eisner and Iger had a sometimes contentious relationship.)  Iger's Universal Phoenix Features, which created various comics for syndication, came up with the character (drawn by Mort Mesklin) for Editors Press Service, which sold the first Sheena story to the British comic book Wags, where it appeared in issue #46, January 1938.  To disguise the fact that Universal Phoenix Features consisted only of Iger and Eisner, the pseudonym "W. Morgan Thomas."

In America, Sheena first appeared in Jumbo Comics #1, September 1938, from Fiction House.  the feature appeared in every issue of Jumbo Comics, ending with the April 1953 issue.  She gained her own title in 1941 with the first issue (of eighteen) of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, dated Spring 1942 -- making her the first female comic book character with her own title -- edging out Wonder Woman, who first appeared in a Summer 1942 issue.

Later on, Sheena would be rebooted and reimagined and given supernatural powers, as well as the iconic two-piece leopard outfit many associated with her.  But, for now, she is still wearing the one-piece skimpy leopard skin dress that has served her well for many adventures (I should note that in  the original story, the character wore a red dress, but a red dress does not a jungle queen make).

This issue gives us three adventures of Sheena, two apparently original and one reprinted from Jumbo Comics #63.  In the first, Sheena rescues Kazembe, the chief of the peaceful Basuto tribe.  An evil white man, Kessler, and the fierce Dango tribe have overpowered the Basuto.  Kessler is not afraid of sheena because his magic fire spear (rifle) never  misses.  silly man.

In the second episode, Bobtail, the king of f6ang and claw and a tawny terror, has been terrorizing the territory so Sheena has set a trap for the killer lion.  In the meantime, an Egyptian prince has started a hunt for a lion, unaware that several of his servants plan to kill him so a rival can come to power.  Sheena puts a halt to that plan -- actually bobtail does, by killing the man bad guy who was about to kill Sheena.  Then, simply because there are more pages to go in the story, Sheena stumbles upon a safari under attack by normally peaceful Cheetahs.  Turns out the great white hunter of the safari had killed a cheetah just for fun and that peeved off the other cheetahs.  Turns out the bad hunter is in search of a pygmy tribe that can magically change the size of animals, either larger or smaller -- power like that could be worth a fortune in the right unscrupulous hands.  Sheena and Bob are captured, left to die, escape, fight a giant warthog, chase the bad guys down the river, capture all but the bad hunter, who escapes and then is caught in a bear trap that Bob set for Bobtail.  Bobtail lives to fight another day.  this is the story that was a reprint.

In a two-page text story, Lady Beddington-Smythe, a noted sports huntress tries to shoot Chim.  Sheena warns the huntress off, but as an Englishwoman, Lady Beddington-Smythe does not take orders from a...a savage!  Sheena has to call in Simba the lion to convince her otherwise.

The final story sheen=a comes across a wounded man who is under attack by a pack of gorillas.  The man, who had been shot, mutters something about the lost city of the Portuguese before he slips into unconsciousness.  The evil Taluki has captured Bob and will kill him unless Sheena leads him through the swamps to the lost city.  The lost city is actually an ancient castle with a treasure room of gold along with the long-dead bodies of ancient Portuguese soldiers.  Bob reappears and he and Sheena defeat Taluki's men.  Taluki escapes with some gold, but without Sheena to lead him back through the swamp, he falls into quicksand and gets sucked up.  Once again there is peace in the jungle.

Better than many of the other comic books of its time.  BTW, the cover has absolutely nothing to do with any of the stories within,

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=97636&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE MOUSE ON THE MOON

The Mouse on the Moon by Leonard Wibberly (1962; filmed in 1963 and directed  by Richard Lester)

I seldom re-read books, but, by coincidence, I recently read several science fiction books about the early days of the Space Race and I felt an overwhelming urge to revisit one of my favorites.

If you ask me what country, aside from my own, I most respect, the answer, hands down, would be thee Duchy of Grand Fenwick.  I say this merely because I am a rational man and have a great love for humanity,

For over six centuries, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick lay nestled in the northern Alps, snugly located between France and Switzerland.  It is the smallest country in the world with a population of  just over five thousand people.  Proud of its ancient heritage, Grand Fenwick disdains almost all modern appurtenances -- there no phones, no cars, no telegraph, and -- to the ire of the Count of Mountjoy, the country's prime minister -- no indoor plumbing.  (The count really wished he could take a warm bath.)  It's army carries only longbows as weapons, through both tradition and inclination; the only other weapon in its arsenal is a dusty, unused Q-bomb -- a powerful device invited by the Grand Fenwick's sole scientist, the absent-minded Dr. Kokintz, whose experiments are often interrupted by bird watching excursions   Grand Fenwick's feeble economy is supplied by sheep and wine (specifically, Pinot Grand Fenwick, a superb wine).  The country is ruled by the regnant Duchess, Gloriana XII, "a somewhat young willful lady of twenty-three," but nonetheless truly loved by all.

The trouble began when Gloriana decided she wanted a full-length Russian ermine coat, one more suitable for her position than her regular cloth coat.  The coat Gloriana wanted would cost $50,000, equal to or perhaps more than the country's entire budget.  She tasked Mountejoy with the problem of getting her the coat.  Mountejoy had for years been unable to convince the Council to provide funds for indoor plumbing; how can he convince them the spring for such an expensive coat?  At the same time, two bobolinks were spotted in the Duchy's national forest, which was about twenty acres smaller than Winnie-the-Pooh's hundred acre wood...

In the first book in the series, The Mouse That Roared, Mountejpy had devised a plan to increase the Duchy's coffers.  He declared war on America and invaded the country with Grand Fenwick's standing army (all twelve of them, armed with long bows).  The plan:  invade on Monday, lose on Tuesday, and America will provide funding to rebuild Grand Fenwick's war-torn economy by Friday.  That plan did not work out because Grand Fenwick somehow won the war.  Still, Mountjoy -- who had been hearing of th space race between America and Russia to be the first to reach the moon -- decided to try again.  He wrote a letter to the Secretary of State requesting a loan of $5,050,000 -- five  million for the Duchy's non-existent space program and $50,000 for a fur coat.  The State Department rightly believed that the five million would actually be spent on plumbing (and were a little confused on the fur coat part), but decided a gesture would make for good publicity over the Russians.  But five million was an embarrassing sum, so they upped to fifty million for the supposed space program, and made the entire amount a gift, rather than a loan.

Mounntejoy was a politician and believed in deception rather than honesty.  The people of Gran Fenwick, however, were not politicians and believed in honesty.  If the money was not used for a rocket to the moon, they would return it.  After much haggling it was agreed that the original five million would be spent on plumbing and the rest on the as yet non-existent space program.  

About those bobolinks, which are native to northeastern North America and have never been seen in Europe...  Dr. Kokintz went out and took some photographs to show to the Audubon Society  but, when developed, the photographs were blurred, which led to the discovery of the startling properties of Pinot Grand Fenwick.  In short, the wine was the key to atomic rocket power.  There was now no reason Gran Fenwick could not start its own moon landing project.

The problem was the rest of the world did not believe Grand Fenwick was serious.  Not, that is, until the rocket launched carrying Dr. Kokintz and Vincent Mountjoy to the moon at a leisurely pace of a thousand miles an hour.  Russia and American scramble to launch their own rockets to get to the moon first and declare it in the name of their own countries...

A truly funny, truly biting satire on world politics.  Like me, you'll be rooting for little Grand Fenwick.  And, yes, the bobolinks filled their nest with four eggs, and four tiny bobolinks were added to the world at the book's end.  Yay!

Here's a clip from the 1963 film.  (Sorry, the full movie is behind a paywall.)  The film stars Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Bernard Cribbins, David Kossof, Terry-Thomas, and June Ritchie. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yqZzPV5V7k

THE ADVENTURES OF SAM SPADE: SAM AND THE PSYCHE (THE CASE OF DR. DENOFF) (AUGUST 2, 1946)

Currently reading The Return of the Maltese Falcon by Max Allan Collins, so I thought it would be fun to check out Sam from radio's Golden Age, with Howard Duff as Spade and Lurene Tuttle as Effie.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbeDuJKqeHo&t=3s+

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: KID CARDULA

"Kid Cardula" by Jack Ritchie (first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 1976; reprinted in Alfred Hitchock's Anthology #2, Spring/Summer 1978, also published in hardcover as Alfred Hitchcock's Tales to Take Your Breath Way, 1977; in Fantastic Creatures, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, & Charles G. Waugh, 1981; in Alfred Hitchcock Tales of Terror, edited by Eleanor Sullivan, 1986; in Fantasy Stories, edited by Andrew Goodwyn, 1991; and in Ritchie's collection Cardula and the Locked Rooms, 2026.

Okay, so the guy's a vampire but neither he nor the author nor Cardula's loyal servant Josef ever mention it directly; neither, it seems do any of Cardula's clients -- and no mention= was ever made about any possible anagrams of Cardula's name.  Ritchie wrote nine stories about Cardula, who becme a private investigator in the second story, with office hours from 8 PM to 4 AM, depending on the solstice.

"Kid Cardula" was the first story in the series.  Cardula is broke and needs rent money.  (Later in the series we learn that he was once very rich but most of his monies were invested in extensive holdings in such countries as Cuba, the Belgian Congo, Lebanon, Angola, and Bangladesh...areas that turned nout to be very poor investments at the time.)  Through reading the sports pages, he learned that there was a great deal of money to bade in boxing for very little (for him) effort.  Cardula, pale skinned, of an uncertain age, and dressed all in black, went to Manny, a local gym owner and boxing manager and offered his services.  

The easiest way to get rid of this guy was to put Cardula in the ring against a professional boxer who would make short work of him.  The boxer hit Cardula with a couple of powerful punches to no effect.  Then Cardula struck out with a left  that was so fast one could hardly see it, and with  that one punch knocked his opponent unconscious.  Manny began to see dollar signs.  Cardula had one condition, however:  he would only fight at night, claiming he suffered from a case of photophobia.  

Cardula's first professional fight was against a rising fighter named McCardle.  McCardle was just a few matches shy of the big time and his scheduled opponent was scratched due to illness.  McCardle needed an easy opponent at the last minute and Cardula appeared to fir the bill.  When the fight weas held, however, Cardula knocked McCardle out.  The fight lasted nineteen seconds, including the count.

After that, Manny convinced Cardula to stretch his matches out and not to go for the knockout so early ion the game.  He even talked Cardula into faking being knocked down a couple of times before wining a match.  Things were going good.  Cardula's rent was paid, he kept winning matches, began to get  a local reputation, and even attracted the interest of a  number of curious women -- none of whom he paid much attention to.  Until...

Cardula told Manny he was quitting the ring and was marrying a very rich lady who had expressed more than an interest in him.  Since she had money, he no longer needed to earn money boxing.  What really happened, though, was that Cardula's distant overseas relatives learned of his boxing career and his growing reputation and advised him to stop.  It was always best for Cardula to "fly" under the radar.

Poor Manny.  His dream of riches managing Cardula had vanished.  But in leaving, Cardula left Manny one final gift in appreciation...

Jack Richie was a master of the criminous short story with never an extraneous word or a word lout of place.  His stories often have a slight humorous bent and an unexpected ending.  I have mentioned before that I feel he was second only to Edward D. Hoch in ingenuity, plot, and originality.  Cardula and the Locked Rooms -- which contains all nine Cardula stories, plus six additional "impossible" crime stories -- is only the sixth Ritchie collection to appear; he wrote over 500 stories so there are still a lot of gold nuggets to be mined.  As you go through life, a simple rule of thumb is never pass up a Jack Ritchie story.

Th June 1976 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (also including stories by Lawrence Block, Nelson DeMille, Kay Nolte Smith, Joyce Harrington, and others) can be found here:

https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/PU/AHMM_1976_06.pdf

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: BAD ACTOR (JANUARY 9, 1962)

We lost one of America's greatest actors this week.  Even before his noted portrayal of Boo Radley in his first film, To Kill a Mockingbird, Robert Duvall was giving some great performances on television, as in this 1962 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  Directed  by John Newland from a "Max Franklin" (Richard Deming) story adapted by Robert Bloch, Duvall plays Bart Collins, a struggling actor who accidently kills a rival for a part.  Now what can he do with the body -- especially that pesky head?  Charles Robinson plays the unlucky victim; Carole Eastman plays Duvall's girlfriend; and William Schallert is the cop who investigates.

Enjoy.

https://archive.org/details/alfred-hitchcock-presents-s-7e-1-colorized-sd/alfred+hitchcock+presents-s7e14shrt-colorized-sd.mkv

PRESIDENTS' DAY...PLUS

When I was a kid, February was a cool month, and not only because my childhood was spent in New England.  Every four years the month would fatten to include an extra day -- a neat trick for the shortest day of the year..  And we had Groundhog Day and Valentine Day and two  no-school holidays:  Lincoln's Birthday (February 12) and Washington's Birthday (February 22; February 11, old style).  Lincoln's Birthday was not a federal holiday but Massachusetts and many other states celebrated it; Washington's Birthday had been a federal holiday since 1879 for offices in Washington, and 1885 for all federal offices, and was celebrated under the Gregorian calendar on February 22.  In 1971, the Uniform Federal Holiday Act shifted the holiday to the third Monday in February.   The day soon became known as Presidents' Day as a way to honor all presidents; it was placed between Lincoln's and Washington's birthday as both a nod to those two great men,  but also to avoid any single president of choice.  Officially, however, the day is still recognized  by the federal government as Washington's Birthday.  (For those who do not wish to honor our 45th and 47th president on this day, there's your out.)

Needless to say, all of our presidents have been flawed in one way or another, but several -- Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelt come to  mind -- have far more chalks in  the plus column than in  the negative; others (Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, for example) have come close.  Historian are constantly changing their rankings of American presidents, but over the years we as a country have moved ever closer to the ideas that make us distinctly Americans.

Today is a day to reflect on our past, our present, and our possible futures.

Today is also the day that, 103 years ago, Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of the Pharoah Tutankhamun.  I think that should also be celebrated, of sorts.  So here's a link to the 1964 Hammer horror film The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, starring Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard, George Pastell, Fred Clark, and Jeanne Roland, with Dickie Owen as Ra-Antef the Mummy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0akpPDBEQcs

HYMN TIME

 Johnny Cash.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp70V6a8r00