Mom always liked you best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g05ChFQyHR0&t=2s
Small House of Everything
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Saturday, May 9, 2020
FEATURE COMICS #144 (MAY 1950)
Stunt Man Stetson is working on a new film, Gold and Greed, based on a true story that happened to script writer Ann Joyce. Filming is a near as possible to where a lost gold mine is supposed to be and the bad guys hope the proximity will jog Ann's father's mind about the location of the mine. Of course they plan to register the mine for themselves. Stetson does a few dangerous movie stunts, one of which has been sabotaged by the bad guys. All ends well. Stetson's girlfriend Minx Medway and his precocious nephew Nipper are along for the ride.
Spectacled teen Rims and his pal Emerson have a date with the beautiful Dobson twins. The twins are classy gals and Rims and emerson have no cash to impress them on their date, so Rims turns his house into a teen club while his parents are for the night. The cash they bring in should be enough to show the Dobson girls a good time. But Rims' business acumen is not too good -- he ends up out thirteen bucks and a cake and ham his mother had made for a woman's club luncheon the next day. Cashless, Rims calls one of the twins to tell he is sick and cannot go out with her that weekend. Turns out the girls' parents had given them ;permission to hold a party and Emerson should come even though Rims is "sick." Life is never easy for a 50s teen.
Bandleader Swing Sisson buyus an old trumpet at an auction and lets band member Toby use it. the trumpet is really the legendary Horn of Roland which can repel armies with a single blast and the bad guys want it; they've already managed to get Roland's sword that could cut through the hardest metal like butter. When the bad guys attack Swing and Toby outside the Clover Club, they soon realize that a horn can trump a sword.
A new up-and-coming magistrate is assigned to court and comic policeman Shananigan is warned to be on his best behavior. Meanwhile, Shenanigan's Uncle Egbert has been told by a shrink how to control a unnamed "fatal impulse" by giving free rein to all his other whims and urges. Giving into his whims meant yanking on an old man's beard and using a rug-beater to whack a hefty matron's fanny. You've guessed it -- the bearded old man is the new magistrate and the hefty matron is his wife. So when Uncle Egbert goes to court, there's the judge with a beard that is just crying to be yanked...
Add to this three one-page humor strips and you have a so-so issue from Arnold Publications which relied on teen love and funny animal comics, along with several action titles. Under their Quality imprint, Arnold created The Clock (the first masked hero in comics), and published Blackhawk and Doll Man. I do have give this issue of Feature Comics props, though, for having unusual heroes in the form of a movie stunt man and a swing band leader.
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=75898&b=i
Spectacled teen Rims and his pal Emerson have a date with the beautiful Dobson twins. The twins are classy gals and Rims and emerson have no cash to impress them on their date, so Rims turns his house into a teen club while his parents are for the night. The cash they bring in should be enough to show the Dobson girls a good time. But Rims' business acumen is not too good -- he ends up out thirteen bucks and a cake and ham his mother had made for a woman's club luncheon the next day. Cashless, Rims calls one of the twins to tell he is sick and cannot go out with her that weekend. Turns out the girls' parents had given them ;permission to hold a party and Emerson should come even though Rims is "sick." Life is never easy for a 50s teen.
Bandleader Swing Sisson buyus an old trumpet at an auction and lets band member Toby use it. the trumpet is really the legendary Horn of Roland which can repel armies with a single blast and the bad guys want it; they've already managed to get Roland's sword that could cut through the hardest metal like butter. When the bad guys attack Swing and Toby outside the Clover Club, they soon realize that a horn can trump a sword.
A new up-and-coming magistrate is assigned to court and comic policeman Shananigan is warned to be on his best behavior. Meanwhile, Shenanigan's Uncle Egbert has been told by a shrink how to control a unnamed "fatal impulse" by giving free rein to all his other whims and urges. Giving into his whims meant yanking on an old man's beard and using a rug-beater to whack a hefty matron's fanny. You've guessed it -- the bearded old man is the new magistrate and the hefty matron is his wife. So when Uncle Egbert goes to court, there's the judge with a beard that is just crying to be yanked...
Add to this three one-page humor strips and you have a so-so issue from Arnold Publications which relied on teen love and funny animal comics, along with several action titles. Under their Quality imprint, Arnold created The Clock (the first masked hero in comics), and published Blackhawk and Doll Man. I do have give this issue of Feature Comics props, though, for having unusual heroes in the form of a movie stunt man and a swing band leader.
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=75898&b=i
Friday, May 8, 2020
FORGOTTEN BOOK: THIS ONE WILL KILL YOU
This One Will Kill You, edited by Alfred Hitchcock (1971)
It should come as no surprise that Alfred Hitchcock never edited a thing. The Hitchcock name was popular and a number of publishers cashed in on that fact and licensed the name. A long series of ghost editors, including Don Ward. Robert Arthur, Hal Masur, Henry Viet, Peter Haining, and persons unknown, produced a long string of anthologies from 1945's Suspense Stories (Dell) on. It was not until 1976 that named editors , beginning with Eleanor Sullivan and, later Cathleen Jordan, appeared on Hitchcock anthologies; this was with regularly-spaced anthologies of stories from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. (AHMM was founded in 1956 by HSD Publications; it is still alive today after changing publishers first, in 1975 with Davis Publications, then in 1992 by Dell Magazines.)
A slew of paperback "Hitchcock" anthologies appeared in the 70s by Dell Publishing, each mining past issues of AHMM for its contents. The magazine was noted for fast, clever, and ultimately forgettable stories that covered the range of mystery and crime fiction, often with an ironic twist at the end. Midlist writers and short story specialists filled each issue. The Dell paperbacks, using AHMM as its source, were basically interchangeable -- entertaining, slight, with nothing to make one anthology stand out from another.
There also a series of paperback anthologies published solely in England and ghost-edited by Peter Haining. Which brings us to This One Will Kill You, reportedly edited by Haining but published first by Dell before being published in British paperback the following year. The lineup features some of AHMM's most popular authors including Jack Ritchie (who had over 100 stories published in the magazine), James Holding, John Lutz, Henry Slesar, C. B. Gilford, and Robert Colby. Ritchie wrote short stories exclusively, while Holding and Gilford mainly wrote short stories; others were noted for their novels as well as their prodigious short story output. Richard Deming, John Lutz, Ed Lacy, and Hal Ellson -- all represented here -- were (and, in the case of Lutz, are) well-regarded for their novels.
It's is hard to pick the best from the anthology's tales. All are good, but none are outstanding. In other words, this and other Dell anthologies are basically comfort food -- nourishing but not memorable. Luckily, we all need comfort food from time to time.
The contents:
It should come as no surprise that Alfred Hitchcock never edited a thing. The Hitchcock name was popular and a number of publishers cashed in on that fact and licensed the name. A long series of ghost editors, including Don Ward. Robert Arthur, Hal Masur, Henry Viet, Peter Haining, and persons unknown, produced a long string of anthologies from 1945's Suspense Stories (Dell) on. It was not until 1976 that named editors , beginning with Eleanor Sullivan and, later Cathleen Jordan, appeared on Hitchcock anthologies; this was with regularly-spaced anthologies of stories from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. (AHMM was founded in 1956 by HSD Publications; it is still alive today after changing publishers first, in 1975 with Davis Publications, then in 1992 by Dell Magazines.)
A slew of paperback "Hitchcock" anthologies appeared in the 70s by Dell Publishing, each mining past issues of AHMM for its contents. The magazine was noted for fast, clever, and ultimately forgettable stories that covered the range of mystery and crime fiction, often with an ironic twist at the end. Midlist writers and short story specialists filled each issue. The Dell paperbacks, using AHMM as its source, were basically interchangeable -- entertaining, slight, with nothing to make one anthology stand out from another.
There also a series of paperback anthologies published solely in England and ghost-edited by Peter Haining. Which brings us to This One Will Kill You, reportedly edited by Haining but published first by Dell before being published in British paperback the following year. The lineup features some of AHMM's most popular authors including Jack Ritchie (who had over 100 stories published in the magazine), James Holding, John Lutz, Henry Slesar, C. B. Gilford, and Robert Colby. Ritchie wrote short stories exclusively, while Holding and Gilford mainly wrote short stories; others were noted for their novels as well as their prodigious short story output. Richard Deming, John Lutz, Ed Lacy, and Hal Ellson -- all represented here -- were (and, in the case of Lutz, are) well-regarded for their novels.
It's is hard to pick the best from the anthology's tales. All are good, but none are outstanding. In other words, this and other Dell anthologies are basically comfort food -- nourishing but not memorable. Luckily, we all need comfort food from time to time.
The contents:
- "Jonathan Craig" (Frank E. Smith), "Six Skinny Coffins" (AHMM, January 1969)
- Richard Deming, "The Clock Is Cuckoo" (AHMM, May 1969)
- "Jack Ritchie" (John George Reitci), "Plan 19" (AHMM, April 1966)
- James Holding, "The Misopedist" (AHMM, April 1968)
- John Lutz, "Fair Shake" (AHMM, April 1968)
- Henry Slesar, "Item" (AHMM, July 1962)
- "Ed Lacy" (Leonard S. Zinberg), "Curtain Speech" (AHMM, February 1962)
- Richard Hardwick, "His Brother's Caper" (AHMM, March 1966)
- Robert Edmond Alter, "The Shunned House" (AHMM, May, 1966)
- C. B. Gilford, "Don't Call It Murder" (AHMM, April 1966)
- Michael Brett [not the "Michael Brett" that is a pseudonym of Douglas Sanderson, and not the "Michael Brett that is a pseudonym of Leslie Frederick Brett], "Comfort, In a Land of Strangers" (AHMM, April 1969)
- Hal Ellson, "Where Credit Is Due" (AHMM, June 1969)
- Fletcher Flora, "Variations on an Episode" (AHMM, February 1967)
- Robert Colby, "Voice in the Night" (AHMM, April 1969)
In this time of pandemic, self-isolation, and a government that is trying open the economy prematurely, comfort food can be sustaining.
Thursday, May 7, 2020
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