Texas Rangers, July 1957

I haven't posted a pulp cover here in a long time, so since I just put one up on the WesternPulps group, I thought I'd upload it here, too. The actual author of the Jim Hatfield novel in this issue is Walker A. Tompkins. I read it years ago, and it's a good one.

Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia

I wasn’t expecting much from this direct-to-DVD action movie, but it turned out to be fairly entertaining. It’s the story of a Navy SEAL team sent into the jungles of Colombia on a recon mission as a favor to the Colombian government because of a tip that Colombian insurgents are up to something big and no good. When they get there, they find themselves in the middle of a whole series of double- and triple-crosses. There’s an abundance of running and shooting, the occasional knife fight, and lots of stuff blows up real good. It all plays like a slightly bigger budget episode of THE UNIT, minus the soap opera stuff back home but complete with the gruff, bend-the-rules colonel in the control center running things. The leads are Joe Manganiello (also known as “Hey, it’s that guy who used to be on ONE TREE HILL. You know, he played Brooke’s boyfriend for, like, half a season.”) and somebody from the WWE who’s billed as Mr. Kennedy (a.k.a. “Who?” “I dunno, I can’t keep up with any o’ them rasslers since The Rock left.”)

Snarky comments aside, Manganiello and Kennedy both make pretty solid action heroes and turn in decent performances. The production values are good, the action scenes are edited so that you can tell what’s happening most of the time, and the script at least tries to throw in a few plot twists, although you’ll probably see most of them coming. The movie is only an hour and a half and seemed to move even faster, and I enjoyed it. If you’re action/adventure fan, I think it’s worth watching.

Star Trek

Here I am, late as usual, writing about a movie all of you saw months ago in the theaters. But what the heck. That never shut me up before.

Like it was yesterday, I remember sitting down to watch the premiere of STAR TREK in 1967. (If it wasn’t 1967, don’t blame me. I don’t fact-check these things, you know.) I was a big science-fiction fan and was really looking forward to it, and it didn’t disappoint me. Sure, the original series looks a little cheesy now, but I never noticed that then. I loved the show, watched all the episodes as they aired, watched the reruns, watched the syndicated reruns, watched the cartoon show, and read all the books based on both. Gradually, though, the enthusiasm waned. When the movies started coming out, I watched them and liked them all right. I didn’t catch up on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION until after it had ended its run, but then I saw all the episodes in reruns and became a fan of that one, too. Then I watched all the other spin-off series (gave up on VOYAGER before it ended, though). Read some of the tie-in novels here and there along the way. So I consider myself a Star Trek fan, although not an obsessive one by any means.

Which brings us to the new STAR TREK movie.

Of course I had to watch it. Several years ago, before there was even any discussion about this one, I read a comment from someone, sorry I don’t remember who, that said, “You’ll know you’re really old when you see different actors playing Kirk and Spock in the movies.” So I guess I’m really old, which comes as no surprise. And as such, I was prepared to be cantankerous and find fault with the new movie. For about two-thirds of it, I still was. I kept thinking, “Yeah, the special effects are good, and the actors are okay, and the story’s pretty interesting, but . . . but . . . but this isn’t right! And that over there’s wrong! And that’s not the way it was!”

But then the movie springs its nice little plot twist that makes everything okay. I won’t go into the details of it, in consideration for the two or three of you who haven’t seen the film already, but it put a grin on my face, I can tell you that. And the overall effect is to make me say that I liked this movie quite a bit and will certainly watch any sequels they’d like to make. I don’t think the magic of the original is quite there, at least not for me, but the movie comes close to capturing it here and there.

It also makes me want to go and read some of the tie-in novels. There are plenty of them out there I’ve never read. Whether or not I’ll ever get around to it is another question. But I might.

UPDATE: The quote about different actors playing Kirk and Spock comes from my friend Don Herron.

The Beat Farmers

Here's another group I like that I'd never heard of until I found them while poking around YouTube. Evidently the band has something of a tragic history, the lead singer having died of a heart attack on stage during a performance.

Southern Culture on the Skids

My musical tastes tend toward jazz, movie soundtracks, rock oldies, and classic country. But I heard this group on the radio the other day and liked their songs, so here's some music for your Saturday. The sound quality in this clip isn't very good, but you can get an idea of the group's enthusiasm and sense of fun.

Forgotten Books: The Nick Adams Stories - Ernest Hemingway

Does anybody read Ernest Hemingway anymore? Is his work still taught in school, or has he gone the way of so many other Dead White Males? I read “Big Two-Hearted River” (which is in this collection) and THE SUN ALSO RISES for high school classes back in the Sixties, but I was already a Hemingway fan and eventually read just about everything he wrote.

And even though I’d read some of the stories separately, I read this collection when it came out in 1972. Like Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, Hemingway’s stories about his sort-of alter ego Nick Adams weren’t written and published in chronological order, so whoever put together THE NICK ADAMS STORIES set out to rearrange them and include some material that wasn’t published in Hemingway’s lifetime to form a somewhat coherent narrative of Nick’s life. While in general I’m not sure that sort of thing is a good idea (L. Sprague De Camp did the same thing with the Conan stories, which as it turns out are much more effective if read in the order in which Howard wrote them, as the recent Del Rey editions have proven), the end result here is to make the stories read more like an episodic novel, and it works very well. Some of them, as the preface points out, make a lot more sense this way.

Of course, the stories are good anyway, no matter in which order you read them. Included are classics like “The Light of the World” (which has one of the all-time great opening paragraphs), “The Killers”, and “Big Two-Hearted River”. The previously unpublished material includes the novella-length “The Last Good Country”, which unfortunately ends in the middle of the action, as if Hemingway couldn’t figure out where to go from there. What we have of the story is really good, though, and it’s a shame he never finished it because it could have been a classic hardboiled adventure yarn.

I had a good time rereading this book, although I did notice one thing. It may be better not to read too many Hemingway stories back to back, because his style is so distinctive that after a while it starts to seem a little like a parody of itself. That’s a minor complaint, though. THE NICK ADAMS STORIES is one of the best books I’ve read this year and one that I highly recommend.

Rocky and Bullwinkle

It was fifty years ago today that ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE debuted. I was in first grade at the time and don't recall if I saw that first episode, but I do have vivid memories of watching it every day after school about that time, and for many years afterwards I watched the show every chance I got. From what little I've seen of it in recent years, it holds up pretty well, especially the segments with Rocky and Bullwinkle themselves. The other stuff doesn't amuse me quite as much as it did back then. I really ought to pick up some of the DVDs, but I don't know when I'd find the time to watch them.

Marvel Masterworks: Fantastic Four, Volume 1

I was going to continue reading the Marvel Masterworks editions reprinting THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (I have Volumes 2 and 3 on hand), but I got sidetracked to another title, the original cornerstone of the Marvel Universe and a title I’ve long considered to be my favorite comic book of all time: FANTASTIC FOUR.

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: FANTASTIC FOUR, VOLUME 1 reprints the first ten adventures of the F.F. from 1961 and ’62. The first issues I ever read were #16 and #17, so I had to catch up on these later, but I’d read them all in various reprints and even owned a couple of those first ten issues at one time or another. No need to recap the origin – you probably already know it if you have any interest in this post at all – but I will make a few comments on some of the stories. The menace in the first issue, the Mole Man, seems like a refugee from one of the Lee/Kirby monster comics. I don’t care that much for Kirby’s art here (or in any of the first three issues, for that matter), and Ben Grimm’s personality is really the only one that stands out in the origin. Reed, Sue, and Johnny are pretty much stereotypes. The second issue, which introduces the Skrulls, is a little better because of the nice twist ending, but the third story regresses with a really lame villain, the illusionist known as the Miracle Man.

In the fourth issue, though, something happens that lifts the series to a higher level. The Submariner, the famous Golden Age character and nemesis to the original Human Torch, returns, albeit in a manner that relies ’way too heavily on coincidence. But there are some really effective scenes in this one.

With the fifth issue, the series begins to hit its stride with the introduction of the F.F.’s all-time greatest villain, Dr. Doom. The time travel plot is a little silly, but the art, with Joe Sinnott inking Kirby, is really good, and we get The Thing dressed as a pirate, so what more do you want? The sixth issue teams up Dr. Doom and Submariner against the F.F. and is also a good story with decent art as Dick Ayers takes over the inking chores. I always liked the Kirby/Ayers art, although I think Sinnott was the best inker ever for Kirby.

The seventh and eighth issues are pretty forgettable, although #8 introduces blind Alicia Masters, who becomes Ben Grimm’s long-time girlfriend. The Submariner returns yet again in #9, which has a silly but entertaining plot about the F.F. going to Hollywood to make a movie, then Dr. Doom shows up again in #10, which also features cameos by Lee and Kirby and introduces the concept that the members of the F.F. know there are comic books being produced about them (and it’s even implied that they share in the revenue from those comics).

Up until this point, the complaints I had about Kirby’s plotting in the early issues of THE AVENGERS haven’t really cropped up, but F.F. #10 really falls apart in terms of logic and continuity. Stan’s script basically ignores the fact that characters do things that make no sense and show up in places they couldn’t possibly be. But out of the first ten issues, two of the stories are excellent (#5 and #6), two are pretty good (#4 and #9), and the others are okay except for #10, the only real dog in the bunch. Unlike THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, which started out great, FANTASTIC FOUR had to grow into greatness, despite the cover proclamation about it being “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!”

Which it was, a couple of years later and for several years after that. But who knows when or if I’ll get around to reading the reprints of those stories?

One more comment: These early issues feature the tragic, surly Ben Grimm who’s always losing his temper with his teammates and threatening to quit. Gee, Reed, Sue, and Johnny, do you think he might have felt a little better about himself and been easier to get along with if you’d actually called him “Ben” every once in a while instead of always calling him “Thing”? No wonder he always felt like it was clobberin’ time! (Although that phrase doesn’t actually appear in any of these stories.)

Losers Live Longer - Russell Atwood

When this book came out a few months ago, it got quite a bit of attention because of its great horizontal cover by Robert McGinnis. Then people actually read the book and realized that LOSERS LIVE LONGER is one of the best private eye novels of recent years.

This is the second appearance for Russell Atwood’s New York City PI Payton Sherwood, but it’s been ten years since the first one, EAST OF A. Sherwood isn’t very successful as a detective, at least not financially. He’s living in his office, which is almost bare of furniture because he’s sold everything to get by. Then he gets a phone call from a well-known, retired private eye offering him some work, and since Sherwood needs the money and also is eager to work with this guy, he accepts.

Problem is, the old PI is killed on his way to Sherwood’s office. Like all good fictional private detectives, Sherwood sets out to investigate the death, even though he doesn’t have a client. This sets into motion an extremely complicated plot involving beautiful women, missing millions, mobsters, drugs, blackmail, and close to a dozen murders. And it’s all packed into less than twenty-four hours of time!

The writing is fast and funny and contemporary, with the plot turning on things like USB drives and skateboards, but at the same time it’s pure BLACK MASK. Remember the passage from an old pulp story that Ron Goulart quotes in the introduction to THE HARDBOILED DICKS, where the detective goes on for almost a page explaining the incredible twists and turns of the story’s plot, then concludes, “Simple. Got it now?” That’s what LOSERS LIVE LONGER is like. Plus there’s a little Mike Hammer influence thrown in, since Sherwood is motivated by wanting to find out what happened to the older PI even though he doesn’t have a client. (Although Sherwood and Mike Hammer are about as different as they can get in every other respect.)

I had an absolutely wonderful time reading this book and highly recommend it. Like some other bloggers whose reviews I checked out, I immediately went on-line and ordered the first one in the series so I can read it, too. And I sure hope that it’s not ten more years before Russell Atwood writes another Payton Sherwood novel, because LOSERS LIVE LONGER is one of the best books I’ve read this year.

A Question

Okay, since most of you are readers: do I spend a couple of weeks reading UNDER THE DOME (because that's how long it would probably take me) or do I read the four or five other books I could read in the same amount of time? I'm not getting any younger, you know! I'm not putting it to a vote or anything, but I'd appreciate your thoughts on the matter.