Michael May's Blog, page 182

Batmobile, Mark II

In Detective Comics #35 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Sheldon Moldoff), Batman has finally quit driving around his bright red sedan and appears to have bought a model that's more fitting for his nightly activities. No special modifications yet, but he's on the right track.

That time Jack Kirby drew Tarzan playing a board game with jungle animals

Happy Kirby Day! The King would have been 96 today. He's not usually associated with Tarzan, but I love the art he did for this game found by Jon's Random Acts of Geekery.

Tarzan 101 | Tarzana

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



Edgar Rice Burroughs had always been interested in having movies made from his novels, so in 1919 he moved his family from Illinois to Southern California to be near Hollywood. Because he loved the outdoors - and because the Tarzan books were making him a lot of money - he bought a 540-acre estate in the West San Fernando Valley and renamed it "Tarzana" after his cash cow. The previous owner had been Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis and the property included orchards, goats, and a 4500-square-foot mansion.



Burroughs fictionalized his family's life on the estate in the novel The Girl from Hollywood, which contrasted the home he'd built with the evils of Los Angeles. But sadly, the ranch became too expensive for Burroughs to operate and he began leasing and selling chunks of it off. He tried building an artists' colony, drilling for oil, and forming a country club, but in 1924 the Burroughs family left the mansion and moved into a bungalow near the author's office. Seven years later, the decrepit mansion was destroyed.



In 1928 though, local residents voted to name their town after the famous ranch and the Tarzana Post Office came into being in 1930. Today, Tarzana is an affluent suburb of LA, but still holds onto historic elements like the country club and a large park that preserves the wild outdoors Burroughs fell in love with when he bought the place.

World's Greatest Detective indeed

Back to Batman.



In Detective Comics #34 (by Gardner Fox, Bob Kane, and Sheldon Moldoff), Bruce Wayne is still in Europe, on his way home after the events of Detective 31 and 32. At his hotel, he sees a guy across the lobby wearing a trenchcoat with a pulled-down hat and thinks he recognizes the chap as "old Jed Farnol."



This leads to a gothic tale involving a wicked count, a family fortune, and the stupidest death trap ever, but the real mystery is what the heck did Bruce Wayne see in this guy that reminded him of his buddy Jed?

Daily Panel | Destroy the Mall; destroy America

The Mutant Punks attack the Mall of America in Ryan Kelly's Funrama #1.

Daily Panel | Only You

From The True Story of Smokey Bear. 

Daily Panel | Traveling 'alone'

From the one-shot comic, Those Who Travel Alone by B. Sabo. I picked this up at Autoptic last weekend with a longer graphic novel (Francis Sharp in the Grip of the Uncanny!) by Sabo that I can't wait to dig into. Really love her style.

Saturday Matinee | The Incredible Petrified World (1957)

You know what I miss? Watching old movies and and writing about them. I got the bug around this time last year, but burned myself out by trying to do it daily. I actually liked doing it that often; I just couldn't keep up with the schedule. But what if I try to do it weekly instead...?



Who's In It?



John Carradine (Stagecoach, House of Dracula), Phyllis Coates (The Adventures of Superman, Panther Girl of the Kongo), Robert Clarke (The Man from Planet X)



What's It About?



Three scientists (Clarke, Sheila Noonan, and Allen Windsor) and a reporter (Coates) escape a wrecked diving bell and take refuge in air-filled, but underwater caves.



How Is It?



Interesting for Superman fans, especially those - like me - who like Phyllis Coates as Lois Lane in the first season of the '50s TV show. Coates plays a reporter here too, but she's no Lois Lane. Her husband is leaving her for another woman, leading Coates' character to hate everybody. And sadly, that one note is the strongest characterization anyone gets in this movie.



Sheila Noonan's (Beast from Haunted Cave) character isn't so bad and gets a couple of good scenes in while arguing with Coates over the reporter's attitude, but like all the other characters in the movie, Noonan's has no life outside of the movie's plot. Even John Carradine is wasted as the inventor of the diving bell. After the accident that leaves the bell stranded at the bottom of the ocean, Carradine seems more concerned about figuring out the flaw in his design than he does about the presumed deaths of the four victims.



There's barely a story here at all. A ton of set-up (including a pointless documentary about sea life that's the only appearance of the octopus from the lying poster) finally leads to the point where the four leads are stranded and escape to some dry, undersea caves. Most of the movie is an unexciting survival tale as they explore the caverns. They meet a stock-footage monitor lizard and a crazy hermit with a fake beard, but that's as thrilling as it gets.



Meanwhile, Carradine and Company are on the surface planning a second expedition with a new diving bell. It's all for science though, not a rescue mission, since everyone believes that the first divers are dead. That means that there's no tension around the second mission and - without anything to be afraid of in the caves - no stakes for the main cast. There are some volcanic earthquakes toward the end of the movie, but by that time the second expedition is underway and the resolution is obvious. In fact, the earthquakes are just there to push the leads out of the caves so that they can be spotted by the second team. I know that sounds spoilery, but "spoiler" implies that a surprise is being ruined and I promise that there are already no surprises in the way this movie ends.



Grade: D+

Daily Panel | 'Two gifts, in fact'

Stephen Mooney's Half Past Danger (colored by Jordie Bellaire) is quietly becoming the most awesome comic on the shelves. Sort of Captain America: First Avenger meets Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Jurassic Park with a ninja for good measure. What's amazing is that it's not just a bunch of random, awesome stuff thrown into a big pot, but also holds together as a great story. Hoping there's more where this came from once the mini-series is finished.

Space Kansans hate cephalopods

Suggested by Shad Daly.