Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spy Novels Magazine, April 1935

I'm a sucker for covers featuring a classy babe with a gun, like this one on SPY NOVELS MAGAZINE. Inside are stories by E. Hoffmann Price, Major George Fielding Eliot, Frederick C. Painton, and more. SPY NOVELS lasted only a few issues but looks like it had some decent yarns in it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story, June 29, 1940

As hot as it is this time of year, a nice snowy cover like this one by A. Leslie Ross is quite refreshing. "Blizzard Brotherhood" sounds like a pretty good story, too, although I don't think I've ever read anything by Kenneth Gilbert. There are plenty of other authors I like in this issue of WESTERN STORY, however, including Harry F. Olmsted, Tom Curry, W. Ryerson Johnson, and Jim Kjelgaard.

Forgotten Books: Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood - Will Eisner

I read about Will Eisner’s work, primarily THE SPIRIT, before I ever read any of the work itself. But then in the Seventies, reprints of some of the Spirit stories began to appear in various black-and-white comic magazines published by Warren, including a few issues composed entirely of Spirit reprints, with gorgeous color covers by Eisner. Right away, I was a fan, struck by the charm, intelligence, humor, and heart of the stories. (Although I realized pretty quickly it was best not to read too many of those short eight-pagers too close together.)

Late in his career, Eisner began writing and drawing graphic novels that are the equivalent of mainstream fiction. One such that I hadn’t come across until recently is DROPSIE AVENUE: THE NEIGHBORHOOD, published in 1995. It may have been intended as the first of a series of similar graphic novels about various locations, but there were never any follow-ups, as far as I know.

This one follows the lives of a multitude of people who live along Dropsie Avenue, a fictional street in the South Bronx, from 1870 to 1970. Eisner spins more than a dozen interconnected yarns and numerous side vignettes in the course of the book’s 170 pages, illustrating them with his distinctive art. As always, he’s great at capturing the lives of normal people in all their tragedies and triumphs, and it makes for compelling reading.

Having said that, I also have to say that DROPSIE AVENUE: THE NEIGHBORHOOD may be the bleakest, most depressing graphic novel I’ve ever read. It’s an endless parade of murder, depravity, prejudice, corruption, and heartbreak. The first settlers, mostly descended from the Dutch, are upset about the English moving in. The English hate the Irish that follow them. The Irish hate the Germans, who hate the Jews, who hate the Italians, who hate the Puerto Ricans, who . . . You get the idea. With each generation, the old-timers hate the newcomers, and there’s constant conflict, often with young lovers caught in the middle. No doubt all of this is realistic, but it’s not exactly entertaining to read. Nor does Eisner ever make any real point except that people should learn how to get along.

I’m recommending the book anyway, because of the sheer quality of the dialogue and to a somewhat lesser extent the art. (I’ve never liked Eisner’s less polished later art as well as his earlier stuff, although I hasten to add, as I have many times before, I’m not really a visual guy and am no expert on art by any stretch of the imagination.) You can’t help but get caught up in the stories he’s telling, and occasionally there’s a glimmer of hope that’s quite satisfying. So if you decide to read this, you may well find it rewarding (I did), but be aware that it’s pretty dark stuff.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Saddle the Wind

SADDLE THE WIND is yet another Western movie I somehow never saw until now, possibly because I’m not a big fan of its star, Robert Taylor, who usually comes across to me as too dour and humorless. In this one he’s a former gunfighter who has settled down and become a rancher. But of course you know that his violent past will catch up to him. An oddly cast John Cassavetes is his younger brother, who has gunfighting ambitions of his own. Complicating things is the always watchable Julie London, who plays a saloon singer Cassavetes brings back to the ranch. Then some homesteaders move into the valley, bringing more trouble with them as things play out a little like SHANE in reverse.

This is a strange little movie. The dialogue is pretty good, not surprising since the screenplay is by Rod Serling based on an original story by veteran pulpster and Western novelist Thomas Thompson. The acting by the leads is okay, although London isn’t given much to do except stand around and look sultry and beautiful, which she does quite well. The supporting cast includes Western stalwarts Royal Dano and Ray Teal. The photography is great, and the action scenes, although sparse, are well done. There’s enough about the movie I liked that I’m glad we watched it, but it’s so relentlessly grim and depressing that I can only give it a mixed recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: New Detective, July 1949

Not a bad cover on this issue of NEW DETECTIVE, but look at that line-up of writers inside: John D. MacDonald, Day Keene, Fredric Brown, William Campbell Gault, J.L. Bouma, and Joel Townsley Rogers. Those are some heavyweight pulpsters who also had successful careers as hardback and paperback novelists.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, April 1946

Injury to a hat alert! I like this cover by Sam Cherry, as I do most of Cherry's work. I also like EXCITING WESTERN, especially the Tombstone and Speedy stories by W.C. Tuttle. They're not as good as the Hashknife and Sleepy stories, but they're pretty entertaining. There's also an Alamo Paige story by Reeve Walker (a house name; I think maybe Walker Tompkins wrote this series), and stories by Syl McDowell, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), Archie Joscelyn, and Barry Scobee (the pride of Fort Davis, Texas). Looks like a good issue.

Forgotten Books: Murder Calls the Black Bat - G. Wayman Jones (Norman A. Daniels)

Just last week I was talking about how it had been five years since I read the first novel in the Ki-Gor series. Well, it’s been more than six years since I read the first Black Bat novel, and now I’m back with the second one, MURDER CALLS THE BLACK BAT, reprinted by Altus Press from the September 1939 issue of BLACK BOOK DETECTIVE.

The Black Bat, for those of you who don’t recall, is former district attorney Tony Quinn, who, like another famous former DA, Harvey Dent, has acid thrown at him in a courtroom. Unlike Dent, who is disfigured and becomes the villainous Two-Face, one of the most prominent members of Batman’s Rogues Gallery, Tony Quinn is blinded by the attack and faces a bitter life of unending darkness. But then he meets a beautiful young woman who arranges for him to have a mysterious surgery that not only restores his sight, it allows him to see even in pitch blackness. Blessed with this unexpected ability, Quinn decides to pretend to still be blind so he can don a black hood and fight crime as the mysterious and somewhat sinister Black Bat. He recruits his lovely blond benefactor, Carol Baldwin, to help him in this quest, along with former confidence man and reformed small-time crook Silk Kirby and a big palooka named Butch. The cops, of course, think the Black Bat is just another criminal, so they’re determined to catch him, especially dogged Sergeant McGrath, who’s convinced Tony Quinn is the Bat despite his apparent blindness. Police Commissioner Warner suspects Quinn, too, but he realizes how much good the Bat is doing and is ambivalent about catching him.

In other words, this series marks just about every check box in the masked vigilante genre, so whether or not it’s any good depends almost entirely on the quality of the writing and the cleverness of the plots. In the case of the Black Bat, most of the novels were written by Norman A. Daniels, one of the most dependable pulpsters in the business before he went on to a long and also successful career as a paperbacker. I’ve always regarded Daniels as a solid member of the second tier of hero pulp authors. His work lacks the spark that makes Lester Dent, Walter B. Gibson, and Norvell Page superstars in that genre, but his stories are always well constructed and move right along without too many implausibilities.

MURDER CALLS THE BLACK BAT has to do with a gang of jewel thieves who are able to steal gems right out of jewelry stores and substitute top-notch paste replicas. Tony Quinn is drawn into the case because one of the store owners is a friend of his. There are several murders and a bunch of suspects, the Black Bat and his allies get captured and escape a number of times (the best scenes in the novel take place in an abandoned sewer tunnel during one of these sequences), and finally the Black Bat manages to get all the characters together to reveal the mastermind behind the whole scheme. It’s a little on the bland side and the resolution could have been more dramatic, but overall this is an entertaining yarn. It’s a lot better written than the Ki-Gor novel from last week—but the Ki-Gor was more fun, if that makes sense. I’ll read more of the Black Bat, which also is supposed to get better as it goes along, and I hope it won’t be six years before the next one.

The Witnesses - James Patterson and Brendan DuBois

The family next door has a very dark secret.

The Sanderson family has been forced into hiding after one of them stumbled upon a criminal plot. Or so they think. No one will answer their questions. And the terrifying truth may come too late....

Man, this book is fast-paced. I didn't read it in one sitting, but I did read it in one day, which is unusual for me. Like all James Patterson novels (no matter who actually writes them), the chapters are short, there's lots of dialogue, there are innocents and truly despicable bad guys, and the plot twists are considerable. In this case, you've got an archeologist, his travel guide author wife, and their two kids (one of whom is a bit unusual) as the innocent family in trouble and being protected by a stalwart government agent, plus the people out to get them and some unlikely allies.

This is part of the Bookshots series, more novellas than novels, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I have no idea how much is Patterson and how much is DuBois, but the prose is really smooth and entertaining. I haven't read anything else by DuBois except the science fiction story "The Siege of Denver", which is very good. I think I need to read more by him, though. I might read more of Patterson's Bookshots, although I'm not a fan of most of the series they spin off from. I really like novellas, though, so I'll probably give the stand-alones a try.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The 5th Wave

A whole lot of alien invasion. A little bit of teen angst and romance. Chloe Grace Moretz kicking butt. Yep, it's another movie based on a series of post-apocalyptic YA novels, but unlike the big-name franchises, I'd never heard of this one. There's nothing in THE 5TH WAVE you haven't seen or read before, but it's fairly well made and reasonably entertaining. If they make movies out of the two sequel novels, I'll probably watch 'em.

There is one wince-inducing gun mistake, but I was never sure if it was ignorance on the part of the screenwriters (or the author of the source novel), or if it was a deliberate mistake used as a bit of characterization. I lean toward the former.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, October 10, 1930

You don't see too many "clown with a gun" covers, or at least I haven't, but I like this one. Circus stories were pretty common in the pulps, though, and I've enjoyed the ones I've read. Thomson Burtis, who wrote this one, was best known for his aviation stories, as I recall. Elsewhere in this issue of SHORT STORIES is an installment of a serial by James B. Hendryx featuring Corporal Downey of the Mounted Police, along with stories by prolific pulpsters Foster-Harris, Bertrand V. Sinclair, and Robert E. Pinkerton, among others.